#metasks

[linkspooky]

Hi I really love ur metas your jjk ones really made me appreciate the story even more. I was curious about ur analysis on why Gojo is important to Geto.

It's obvious as to why Geto is important to Gojo and how Geto effected him but I don't think it's talked about enough of the reversal

That's a good observation anon, the story makes it less obvious what Geto needs Gojo for, while spending a long time lingering on the tragedy of Geto's loss and what the loss of his only real friend meant for Gojo.

I think part of this is because Geto is a character of deep self-reflection so a lot of his internal narration is about his feelings towards his self and thinking through his own ideals and what that means. Whereas Gojo doesn't really self reflect but he does observe other people. We don't know what Gojo's opinions on a lot of things are, but we know what Geto meant to him because he's much clearer on how he felt towards Geto. Geto's staring into himself trying to figure what he feels personally, Gojo is always staring at other people trying to figure out what they feel.

As for why Gojo means so much to Geto, it's important to remember that they are a duo. They're the same idiot in different fonts. Geto's a much more human character and we are inside his head more often so it's easy to forget that when they were young Geto had the same kind of god / superiority complex that Gojo did.

Geto is associated with religious imagery over and over again, the same way that Gojo is associated with budhist ideals of enlightenment and escaping karma. They are both people who were in their teenage years more powerful than everyone around them, and because of that looked down on everyone.

Even Geto's stated ideals of "protecting the weak" come from a place of superiority. He still divides people mentally into the weak and the strong. The special ones and the common rabble. He sees people the same way Gojo does, he just believes that the strong like him and Gojo have a moral obligation to use their powers responsibly in service of others.

Geto's not more humble than Gojo. Their moral disagreement comes from how they should use the power they've been given, but they both feel that the power they have puts them in a position above other people.

All of this to illustrate the fact that if Gojo felt isolated as a teenager because all the power he had made him feel lonely and unable to connect with others, then so Geto probably felt isolated in the same way too. They each found in each other someone they could finally call their equal. Because of it they gained someone they could be vulnerable around and someone they could trust to watch their back.

The things Geto does for Gojo (check on his feelings when no one else would, go out of his way to reassure him), Gojo does for Geto in return. It's not Geto always taking care of Goo it's a partnership between the two of them where they lean on each other.

When Kuroi is kindapped and Geto immediately falls into a funk and starts to blame himself for his mistake, it's Gojo who reassures him by hurrying him along and telling him they need to focus on planning what they should do next. Gojo knows Geto well enough to know his tendency to get trapped in his own thoughts and gives him the kick in the pants he needs.

In the same scene where Geto checks on Gojo's well-being to make sure he's not overusing his power, Gojo returns the sentiment by reassuring Geto not to worry about him because he won't push himself too hard and that he's not in this alone Geto's here too.

That's probably a big part of it for Geto. Yes, Geto tends to naturally slide into the caretaker role, watching out for Gojo and checking in on him but at the same time Geto probably likes that there is someone who needs him in that way. If Gojo's defined by his lack of connection with other people, Geto's defined by the way he goes out to make connections. It's nice to be needed as they say. The fact that someone as seemingly self-sufficient as Gojo not only relies on Geto a great deal, but lets Geto take care of him is probably a big part of their bond.

Which is probably why Gojo's awakening post Toji is a big part in why they started to grow apart from each other. If Geto likes to live in service to other people, and defines himself by his connection to others he probably interpreted Gojo no longer needing his support on missions and suddenly doing everything by himself as Gojo pulling away from him.

I think a big part in Geto's downfall was the hit he took when one he was defeated by Toji someone without Jujutsu and too, Gojo suddenly became out of his reach. Gojo himself never said that they were no longer the strongest duo, or that they were no longer the strongest together it's all Geto. As I said Geto has as much of a god complex as Gojo does.

He thought they were on the top together, and not only is he suddenly confronted with his own weakness at the exact same time Gojo's become so strong it appears on the surface that he no longer needs anyone's support, especially not Geto's.

Nanami says it out loud, but Geto probably echoes the sentiment. If Gojo is now strong enough to handle every mission on his own then what need does he have for other sorcerers - and Geto in particular? Geto goes from feeling needed in a lot of ways by Gojo who was just as important a friend to him as he was to Gojo to watch Gojo suddenly handle everything alone. In a lot of ways it probably felt like Geto lost Gojo far before the KFC breakup and his defection from Jujutsu High. From Geto's perspective their relationship was over, their partnership broken and Gojo just did not realize it until after the village massacre.

At first Geto had as big of an ego with Gojo, and connected in a special way with him because the two of them were on top together. However, he came to believe that the only reason their partnerhsip worked was because they were both the strongest. When Gojo became the strongest alone Geto believed incorrectly that what they once had was lost and Gojo no longer needed him when Gojo's emotional reaction to Geto's defection shows that's anything but true.

In Geto's mind it is though because he's kind of got the same messed up way of dividing people into strong and weak that Gojo does, he probably just realized that he was one of the weak ones and feared Gojo thinking the same way.

During Geto and Gojo's final confrontation he almost has an inferiority complex about it when he talks about how if he had the limitless he'd easily be able to accomplish what he set out to do.

Until that moment Geto always thought they were equals, but now Geto's suddenly talking like he covets Gojo's power. He suddenly wants to be Gojo, probably because he incorrectly believes that their partnership is base don being equals in power when it's really just a normal friendship.

Which is why the loss of Gojo's friendship affects Geto just as badly as the other way around. Everyone wants to be equals with their friends, especially to a friend as important as Gojo was to Geto.

There's almost a tragic irony in how when speaking of his friendship to Nanako and Mimiko, Geto acts like their friendship ended when Gojo left Jujutsu High. It's their in his death scene too, Geto is surprised by the fact that Gojo has any feelings left for him.

Geto's so insecure over his connection to Gojo he didn't understand that in Gojo's mind they were still friends right up until the very end, and perhaps if he were just a bit more secure they would have been able to reach one another instead of falling apart.

#jjk meta #geto suguru #suguru geto #gojo satoru #satoru gojo #satosugu #metasks

[ronddecryp]

DisCas DAO

Discas is an innovative Blockchain project developed with the main goal of monetizing user opinions and turning highly contentious issues into digital assets.

About Disk DAO

The Discas platform is a next generation social discussion platform focused on revolutionizing social media. This platform will make social discussion more interesting and monetize user activity on the platform. User opinion is that the platform will be monetized while controversial issues will be monetized. The DisCas DAO platform application is called Social Pedia.

DisCas has something in common with regular social media, its distinguishing feature is that while other social media platforms are a means to interact and have fun, DisCas is designed to allow active participants in the ecosystem to earn rewards when their activities are monetized. DisCas has a source of income through Black Caps. It is a platform designed to solve controversial issues that are trending socially. These issues can be turned into digital assets while opinions on the issues are monetized. The platform will definitely provide an excellent solution to people's problems.

DisCas will educate users, hence responsible for a more informed society, it is a platform backed by strong will and backed by state of the art technology.

The Discas ecosystem will bring the world together: students, shoppers, e-commerce, travelers, business investors, governments, communities and more.

The DisCas app is designed to find solutions to hot and trending problems and turn them into Digital assets. Diska will harness the power of the Metaverse to solve various problems. With DisCas powered by Metaverse, everyone will be able to access events in the app. DisCas is built on Web3.0 technology to enable ease of use for everyone. To access the application, users have a metask wallet in their PC browser with uninterrupted internet service.

Problem On the internet there are many forums that people can use to discuss various things, such as Reddit, on this platform users will be able to discuss with other users globally easily. But out of most of these forums, very few reward their users. In fact, users should be rewarded for their participation, because as it can be seen, many forum members provide solutions to various problems but are not rewarded for their participation, even though they have put time and thought into contributing. Therefore, these users should be able to get rewarded for their participation.

The solution

And in response to this, Discas was launched to become a platform where communities, students, investors, shoppers, e-commerce, travelers, tour agents, property agents, businesses, media, institutions and even governments come together to connect. This is a forum designed to reward members who have participated in various activities, such as providing solutions to problems faced by other users or simply commenting. So you could say this is a forum for intellectuals that allows users to discuss various things and get rewards from it. The DisCas ecosystem is designed using blockchain technology which enables easier and more secure monetization and maximizes the functionality of the forum that empowers its users.

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Arbitrator or Publisher is a media that has been given permission to distribute current news based on Request.

Financial backers are individuals who build their Disk into a point.

Experts are clients who take part to deal with problems or offer realities from different data sources.

Appreciators are clients who support the best judgment, thought, or arrangement on a theme by clapping with different nuances and must adhere to guidelines.

Dark Claps can be purchased on stage as a balance of the two Disks, the applause capacity is to see the value of reporters, news and voices.

The voting technique in Discas uses a vote slider that supports voting. The democratic period can be done at any time after the theme is shared.

Ekostem Downloads

(i) News Trade

(ii) NFT opinion,

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Future Developments

DisCas will always improve the ecosystem with the aim of making

society is getting better. There are 5 categories that will be

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Pasar Diska DAC

Globally there are many forums spread over the internet and have millions of members all over the world. These forums contain members who come from various backgrounds and discuss various issues or topics. With so many forums, it means that internet users need a forum where they can voice their opinions and discuss with other users. DisCas DAC itself will offer its services globally and with the various features and advantages it offers, DisCas DAC will be able to become a forum for intellectuals who will discuss various problems and provide solutions and this will enable monetization so that members can be rewarded for their contributions.

The first stage, the DisCas application is implemented off-chain for the purpose of large user penetration, we apply different prices between applications and markets. Token holders will benefit from the buy-back mechanism. We believe this strategy is an efficient way to maintain prices and reduce dumping when users redeem rewards.

$DISC Tokenomics To fund the development of the project, to date DisCas has remained steadfast in its goal of creating and supporting a blockchain ecosystem for everyone. While the allocation of funds is broken down as follows: 4,000,000 (4%) for Seed Sale 4,000,000 (8%) for Private Sale 7,000,000 (7%) for Presale 7,000,000 (7%) for Public Sale 7,000,000 (7%) for Liquidity Pool 6,000,000 (6%) for Marketing 15,000,000 (15%) for Staking Rewards 12,000,000 (12%) for Teams 4,000,000 (4%) for Advisors 10,000,000 (10%) for Partnerships 14,000 .000 (14%) for Project Development, and 10,000,000 (10%) for Treasury Fund

Token $DISC

DisCas DAO ($DISC), symbol: d' is used to power the DisCas Ecosystem as a native token. The token will mainly be used as a utility token in the application. Project beginners and investors will get various benefits such as discounts and premium access. The DisCas token is a BEP20 token standard built on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) smart contract. The maximum supply of DisCas tokens is no more than 100,000,000 and is non-exchangeable. We believe that technology should come at the right time, so in the first phase our application will be off-chain to penetrate multiple users, then gradually implement Blockchain, Web3, NFT, DeFi, DAO, and AI. The team will constantly roll out new updates with new ways of token utility so that tokens will become more and more useful over time.

DisCas will continue to work on biological systems under the pretext of creating an excellent society. There are 5 classes that will be in our repair center:

Installment Gateway, Make buying crypto simpler.

B2C survey, Build more trust in the public arena.

DisCas Capital, Investing in venture possibilities.

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For more information, please visit:

Website: https://discas.io/

Whitepaper : https://drive.google.com/file/d/11SnBWP-HIvRrI3x1gEI0PlZmU_2X19_A/view?usp=sharing

Twitter : https://twitter.com/discas_dac

Telegram : https://t.me/discas_en

Medium : https://medium.com/@discas.dao

Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/discas-vision/mycompany/

Instagram : https://instagram.com/discas.io

Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsejG1DscXHHYBu-d0JlIPw

by Campurejoh link https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3166183

[chrisana988]

Discas DAO

Discas DAO is an innovative discussion ecosystem

About Disk DAO

The Discas platform is a next generation social discussion platform focused on revolutionizing social media. This platform will make social discussion more interesting and monetize user activity on the platform. User opinion is that the platform will be monetized while controversial issues will be monetized. The DisCas DAO platform application is called Social Pedia.

DisCas has something in common with regular social media, its distinguishing feature is that while other social media platforms are a means to interact and have fun, DisCas is designed to allow active participants in the ecosystem to earn rewards when their activities are monetized. DisCas has a source of income through Black Caps. It is a platform designed to solve controversial issues that are trending socially. These issues can be turned into digital assets while opinions on the issues are monetized. The platform will definitely provide an excellent solution to people's problems.

DisCas will educate users, hence responsible for a more informed society, it is a platform backed by strong will and backed by state of the art technology.

The Discas ecosystem will bring the world together: students, shoppers, e-commerce, travelers, business investors, governments, communities and more.

The DisCas app is designed to find solutions to hot and trending problems and turn them into Digital assets. Diska will harness the power of the Metaverse to solve various problems. With DisCas powered by Metaverse, everyone will be able to access events in the app. DisCas is built on Web3.0 technology to enable ease of use for everyone. To access the application, users have a metask wallet in their PC browser with uninterrupted internet service.

How Do Disk Platforms Work?

The DisCas stage provides clients to take part in intelligent conversations. Every client who needs to register Diskas Application is expected to do KYC and need to fill in greeting code from different client to avoid fake records. Clients can be Moderators, Investors, Commentators or Appreciators. Commitment will help two readers and dynamic members in the conversation.

Arbitrator or Publisher is a media that has been given permission to distribute current news based on Request.

Financial backers are individuals who build their Disk into a point.

Experts are clients who take part to deal with problems or offer realities from different data sources.

Appreciators are clients who support the best judgment, thought, or arrangement on a theme by clapping with different nuances and must adhere to guidelines.

Dark Claps can be purchased on stage as a balance of the two Disks, the applause capacity is to see the value of reporters, news and voices.

The voting technique in Discas uses a vote slider that supports voting. The democratic period can be done at any time after the theme is shared.

Ekostem Downloads

(i) News Trade

(ii) NFT opinion,

(iii) Comment to Earn

(iv) Requests for Discussion and Prizes

(v) The NFT market where to buy and sell NFT .

Future Developments

DisCas will always improve the ecosystem with the aim of making society better. There are 5 categories that will be the focus of our development:

Payment Gateway, Ease of buying crypto.

B2C survey, Build more trust in the community.

DisCas Capital, Invest in potential projects.

Discas Blockchain, Expanding the ecosystem.

Election Platform, Simplifying Elections anywhere.

DisCas offers its NFT in the form of an opinion, not necessarily in the form of an image like other NFTs, but in the form of an opinion. DisCas aims to provide a global meeting point for interaction and discussion where many world-renowned savvy influencers will be able to create a huge positive impact on society. The DisCas team has applied Blockchain technology to solve problems in the social interaction industry, It aims to offer censorship resistance, transparency and a decentralized social discussion platform where various items will be offered. Users will be able to earn prize money for participating in the platform.

Diskas Platform will have a big and positive impact on society. It will be a haven for global influencers. Users will be able to benefit from the wide variety of opportunities that will be open to the public on the platform. Below is the token of the original DiscCas $DISC token

$DISC token: Disk is the utility token of the Discas ecosystem, serves as ecosystem fuel, can be used for staking, participating in DAO. Holding $DISC tokens allows users to earn additional profits, shop, monetize opinions, contribute to discussions and much more.

DisCas features are very diverse ranging from allowing users to be able to turn controversial issues into digital assets and monetize them to DAOs that allow users to be able to take issues into a wider realm. This is possible because DisCas is designed using blockchain technology, which will create an ecosystem that is supported by all parties and allows for easier monetization. It is planned that in the future DisCas will further maximize the functionality of blockchain technology so that users can experience the true social function of blockchain.

With a reliable and experienced team, DisCas will be a platform with good fundamentals, which will solve various problems in a simple way. So this will be a forum that will be used by many people globally to be able to discuss and solve various problems and get rewards from it.

Tim

DisCas is made up of professionals and experts in their fields who have years of experience in platform development and in the global crypto market. This team collaborates together in developing a forum for intellectuals to be able to discuss and get rewards from it. With this collaboration, users can experience a forum that is truly useful and empowers its users.

Detail Token

DISC is designed to be a token that will provide stability and rewards to holders, as well as a token that will be used for payments on the platform. The advantage of having these tokens is that users can use them for various things or users can use them to participate in governance platforms. Users can manage all their DISC tokens via a blockchain wallet or any wallet that supports the BEP-20 protocol.

Last words There are many forums on the internet that users can use to discuss, but not all of these platforms reward their users. And Discas can be a solution to this by creating a place for intellectuals to interact and solve various problems and get rewarded for their participation. By using blockchain technology, DisCas will create a forum that is supported by a stable economic system and is empowered by its users. Users will be able to create problems and turn them into digital assets and earn money or users can leave comments and get rewarded for it. It is a forum that will empower its users globally through their discussions.

Official contact information Website: https://discas.io/

Whitepaper : https://drive.google.com/file/d/11SnBWP-HIvRrI3x1gEI0PlZmU_2X19_A/view?usp=sharing

Twitter : https://twitter.com/discas_dao

Telegram : https://t.me/discas_en

Medium : https://medium.com/@discas.dao

Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/discas-vision/mycompany/

Instagram : https://instagram.com/discas.io

Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsejG1DscXHHYBu-d0JlIPw

by chrisana link url https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2633297

[linkspooky]

Hey! sorry to bother you but after your jjk break down i wanted to know what you think about Shoko and her role in the story. I'm just not sure where to put her narratively.

This is going to be a brief answer, but I believe for her limited screen time she still has an important role in the story and it's the same role she plays in the S / S / S trio. Shoko is the adult, as evidenced here by how she's the only one who undercuts Geto's dramatic monologue to point out how childish he's acting. Unlike Gojo who can't get through to Geto whatsoever, Shoko underlines his problem in one sentence. Geto thinks that he's growing up by finding his purpose in deciding to become an extremist, but Shoko calls him out and says he's actually regressing as a person.

Jujutsu Kaisen is a story about children growing into adulthood, and there's a reason that Shoko is the only person in her class to actually reach adulthood. It's because unlike Gojo and Geto who were eternally trapped in their "springtime of youth" and failed to ever adjust to the trauma they experienced in that youth Shoko grew up.

A character who doesn't grow in a story is as good as dead. Gojo had a character arc, but looking back from beginning to end it almost seems like his death against Sukuna was inevitable because he never learned who he was outside of being the strongest, and he never moved past Geto's death in any real way and tried to make connections with other people.

It's something even Shoko of all people was able to see that Gojo wasn't. That for all of Gojo's claims of being alone, not only did he have Shoko by his side all along, but he also has an entire group of students who he was responsible for who were all relying on him. Gojo could have continued living for them instead of going out in a blaze of glory against Sukuna, but he wasn't able to see all the people in his life until it was too late. He kept on being blind to them because he was trapped in the mindset of his youth that he was too powerful to be understood by anyone and then never grew past that.

Shoko is one of the few teachers left alive at Jujutsu High and that's not a coincidence. Nanami's death is deliberately tragic because he was unable to protect people properly as a sorcerer the system was against him. Shoko's not a fighter on the front lines however, she's a doctor who exists sort of outside that system. Yaga was killed by Gakuganji as well. Haibara died an unfortunate victim in his youth. Geto defected because he was unable to grow up, and Gojo goes out dying against Sukuna in a battle to see who's strongest.

The only teachers who are alive are Kusakabe who's a minor character, Utahime who is the only other adult who shows concern for her students, and Mei Mei. I doubt Mei Mei is going to survive either considering she's the game master (this is just my theory but watch I'm correct).

Which leaves Shoko and Utahime who are both adults, and who also have a much more functional friendship that explicitly parallels Geto and Gojo's. There's a reason Gojo's death dream reverts him back to seventeen years old again, because in a way he didn't grow significantly since that time. Nanami, Gojo, Geto they were all unable to leave the regrets of their youth behind so the last we see them in the imaginary afterlife they are seventeen because that's the time they failed to move past.

Shoko grew up. She and Utahime are the only ones who were able to grow up, and because of that they ended up leaving a lot of their friends behind. I think Megumi and Shoko will parallel each other in the end of Gege decides to stick with his plan of three of the four dieand one lives. Megumi the child that needs to grow up, will be the only one of his friends to reach adulthood just like Shoko.

It will be bittersweet because Megumi won't have his friends with him, but unlike Gojo who was trapped in the past forever, life will go on for Megumi and he'll be able to live with all those losses.

#metasks #askspookies #ieri shoko #shoko ieiri

[linkspooky]

Someone has pointed it out before and it's becoming more prevalent now more than ever. Sukuna is really shaping up to be Megumi's own Mahito. Bro has violated him in so many ways - deformed, corrupted and tainted his body and soul that I'm sitting here reading the weekly updates hoping Megumi will finally wake up and yell 'ENOUGH!'. Like, when Megumi finally breaks free I want him to be as crazed as he was (or even more) when he first deployed his domain.

You're right anon, there are a lot of parallels between what Sukuna is doing to Megumi currently, and what Mahito did to Yuji throughout his introduction arc and Shibuya. In fact Megumi's journey right now mirrors wat Yuji already went through in Shibuya, possession of his body, using his body to make him complicit in murder by getting the blood on his hands, then killing off his loved ones to weaken his resolve.

Sukuna is to Megumi what Mahito is to Yuji. They are both curses that represent the opposite of what the heroes represent. Yuji lives to save lives, so Mahito violates life. Megumi lives to save his loved ones and Sukuna rejects the idea of ever loving another person.

Mahito and Sukuna both employ the same strategy to break down the sorcerer they are opposed to, there are several parallels between what Megumi is experiencing right now and what Yuji experienced at the hands of Mahito. The first thing Sukuna did was show Megumi he was too weak to save a friend. In chapter 9 Sukuna rips Yuji's heart out and Megumi isn't able to fight Sukuna enough to force him to fix Yuji. Similiarly, Mahito right in front of Yuji's eyes mutates Junpei and there's nothing Yuji can do to turn him back. Any deal he tries to make is rejected by Sukuna and both of them laugh at him. The two panels even parallel each other in Yuji and Megumi standing in the aftermath of witnessing the deaths.

Mahito also goes out of his way to make Yuji lose his innocence, by proving as the ultimate test of his ideology to save others. Mahito tells Junpei that all life is equally worthless in the same few chapters that Yuji says he doesn't want life to lose it's value.

Yuji wants to give people a natural death, a death that comes at the end of one's life like his grandfather's death, and not the brutal way that victims of curses are killed. Mahito's ability violates life itself by twisting humans into inhumane shapes that mindlessly cry out in agony and lash out at whatever's around them until they die.

Mahito himself also forces Yuji to kill innocent people, because the humans he mutates can't be saved they can only be mercy killed. Something which unnerves both Yuji and even a seasoned professional like Nanami, which Mahito says his soul was shaking in response to seeing what he had done to the humans. If Yuji's philosophy is to save people, and let die natural causes after living long lives Mahito kills people without any reason and gives them unnatural deaths. However, he's not satisfied with just killing Yuji he wants to psychologically break him down he wants to become him.

Mahito acts plotwise as the mirror to Yuji's actions by being his opposite. He's attempting to force self-analysis on Yuji. Yuji doesn't stop to think about killing curses, the same way that Mahito doesn't contemplate killing people.

Mahito has power over Yuji specifically because Yuji does not analyze himself. Part of the reason Mahito and Sukuna in general are able to run rampant over Megumi and Yuji's entire lives is because they are both people who adapt the cog mindset too well.

They act without thinking, and they act for the sake of other people rather than themselves. It's easy to be manipulated, to be blindsided, to be run roughshod over when you are a cog because cogs don't think. The easiest way to get manipulated by others is to not think for yourself after all.

Mahito is essentially trying to get Yuji's ego to break by making him question every philosophy he fights for. His strategy is to violate that same philosophy in front of Yuji's eyes while he's helpless, again and again. Sukuna even helps him in Shibuya.

Sukuna takes away from Yuji the idea that he can die and save others by taking Sukuna with him, by forcing him to become the sole survivor of a massacre. Even if he's executed and Sukuna vanishes permanently he's not going to reduce the total number of deaths in the world because now thousands of people have died because Yuji let Sukuna out in Shibuya.

Sukuna's first move to break megumi when he has control of his body is the exact same play, to convince Megumi that he is a murderer by using ten shadows his own technique to destroy Tsumiki's body. Mahito also as mentioned earlier made this play early on to make Yuji feel like a murderer by having to kill the mutated humans that were just innocent people.

Megumi and Yuji are made to feel like murderers by Sukuna and Mahito respectively, they're also made to kill the people they wanted to save. Yuji's desire is to save everyone so he's forced to mercy kill innocent people, and Megumi's desire is to save his sister so Sukuna's literal first action is to bury Tsumiki as deep as possible.

He's not just taking away Megumi's sister, but also his reason for living and being a sorcerer. The same way that Mahito is trying to show Yuji that his philosophy of saving people is wrong and worthless, Sukuna shows Megumi that everything he did to protect his sister amounted to nothing in th eend. Megumi and Yuji both value life and Sukuna and Mahito violate and trample all over that life.

Flowers = purity and innocence, and Mahito and Sukuna both exist to defile those things, trampling and tearing apart those flowers.

The next action Mahito takes is to kill Yuji's mentor right in front of him. Which is what we just witnessed Sukuna did to Gojo, in Megumi's body. Nanami and Gojo even die in the same way, still standing as their torsos are separated from their lower halves.

Mahito's actions didn't stop with Nanami though, as Yuji when he was about to break from the pressure of Sukuna's massacre in Shibuya received support from Nobara arriving on time to remind him he's not alone.

Only for Mahito to kill Nobara right in front of him a moment later due to a small slip up during the fight. Nobara's unceremonious death and being made to fight alone again breaks Yuji's resolve almost completely until he believes what Mahito has been trying to convince him of, that all of his ideals are wrong, that they're just excuses, that he's completely helpless and can't fight back.

Now, there's a couple of parallels, the murder of Nobara could both parallel the attempted murder of Hana and Angel someone who gave Megumi and the audience a brief hope spot that she'd be able to exorcise sukuna from him only for that hope to be ripped away in the goriest fashion possible.

Or it could be Tsumiki's death which was the breaking point for Megumi at which point he stopped fighting back even curling up in the fetal position like Yuji. It could even be Sukuna immediately awakening to punch Yuji through a building. Either way, Sukuna's strategy mirrors Mahito's here, it's to number one isolate Megumi and convince him he's alone, and two by victimizing all of his friends in front of him he shows Megumi he's helpless to stop him and convinces him not to fight back.

Either way Mahito violates the idea Yuji can save anyone even his friends by killing Nobara in a fight that they are both fighting in, right in front of his eyes, convincing him that his philosophy for helping others was an excuse and he never had the strength to save others to begin with.

The same way Sukuna violates love, he makes a joke of pretending to be Megumi again so Hana will embrace him, only to eat her when she drops her guard. He talks about destroying Tsumiki Fushiguro while she's drawn naked on panel and there are flowers representing purity torn up in the background. Megumi's sister is possessed by Yorozu, a woman who is fanatically in love with Sukuna and the two of them make a twisted mockery of the love between siblings in the bodies of the two siblings they're possessing.

Mahito twists the value and sanctity of life to insist that all life is worth nothing, because Yuji his foil is the one who fights to save as many people as possible without thinking about it. Sukuna rejects love and other people in his life because Megumi is only fighting for the sake of the people he loves.

They even use strategies from the same playbook, forcing their victims to kill, then the killing of a mentor, a friend right in front of them until they've convinced their victims they're helpless and alone.

Mahito insists that he and Yuji are the same. Sukuna's goal too in a way is to become Megumi, by completely dominating his body so he can reincarnate in this era. Mahito wants to kill Yuji, and Sukuna wants to make Megumi experience an ego-death, bury him so deep within his consciousness that he'll never stop fighting back.

Mahito is sucesful in a way because even if Yuji managed to kill Mahito, he became like him. Mahito wanted to covince Yuji that life was meaningless, that he didn't need ideals to strive for and all his ideals were excuses and to get out of a tough situation Yuji decided to just embrace that cog mentality. Mahito convinced Yuji to just keep mindlessly killing curses without looking for a purpose beyond that.

However, that's not a true victory over Mahito because once again that's what Mahito wanted Yuji to think. Mahito was trying to drag Yuji down to his level and convince him he was no better than a curse. Yuji and Megumi are weak to Mahito and Sukuna's manipulations because they embrace the cog-like mindset and don't try to take control of their own lives.

Yuji is currently, still mindlessly exorcising curses while Megumi at the moment is also in a mindless cog like state where he is being used by someone else. Neither of them have broken free from being cogs and become fully self-actualized individuals in control of their own actions, especially in Megumi's case because he's being possessed by Satan.

The only way for them both to fight back will be to take control of their own lives, and define who they are, outside of what Mahito and Sukuna insist that they are. Megumi has to take back his own body at this point because it's the climax of a long arc of never really being in control of his own life or allowed to make his own decisions.

Since Megumi is currently sunk to the deepest part of his shadow, I imagine it will be almost exactly like the first time we see him use his domain. "Bring forth the deepest shadows..."

A future Megumi who has surpassed his own limits. A Megumi who gets to decide what he wants to be, outside of what Gojo wants, or what Sukuna is using him for.

That requires both for Megumi to assert himself, and for Yuji to help him. I've posted this panel a hundred times but Megumi says "Start by saving me..." to rescue Yuji from despair post Shibuya and get him moving again. However, if you think about it Jujutsu Society would say that Megumi needs to be killed for the greater good, and everyone including Gojo has Megumi's rescue from Sukuna as a second priority.

Yuji's act of saving Megumi would also be him asserting his will and throwing off the cog mentality, because he'd be going against Jujutsu Society and deciding for himself who he wants to save.

Megumi and Yuji have had their philosophies tested and completely deconstructed by Sukuna and Mahito respectively, but this isn't the end, but it's up to the boys to reconstruct them. Remember Mahito and Sukuna aren't really enlightened or wise. They're trying to convince Megumi and Yuji of these things to convince them they're helpless so they'll stop fighting back and be easier to dominate. It's up to Yuji and Megumi. To show them both that they're not helpless as Sukuna and Mahito would want them to believe and they can fight back.

#megumi fushiguro #itadori yuji #mahito #ryomen sukuna #metasks

[linkspooky]

How do you feel about higuruma in the last couple chapters + how he died(assuming hes dead he seems pretty dead), normally characters with death wishes like choso for example are denied that wish, but it was granted for higuruma. just in a meta sense how do u think that served the story

The reason why Choso wasn't allowed to die, meanwhile Higuruma dies is less Gege being inconsistent and more they are two different characters with two different arcs. Choso's atonement arc is pretty clear, his arc is probably the most complete arc in the manga. Higuruma doesn't have an arc, he doesn't grow or adapt or change in time even though he has the potential to, and even though he's challenged head on by Sukuna and that's why he dies.

I don't mean to say that Higuruma is a bad character when I say that he doesn't have an arc, but rather his character remains static even though he is a well-rounded character. We can dive deeper into Higuruma's character though, to show what I mean when I say that his arc is static and that's the reason he died.

The Ugliness of the Weak

Everyone jumps to Nanami right away when looking for a character to compare Higuruma too, but while there are superficial similarities the best comparison is actually Geto.

Nanami is probably the prime example of a first grade sorcerer, he and Yuji are probably the only sorcerers who do their jobs for non-selfish reasons. Nanami could have had an escape from sorcery to make more money in a safer job, but he goes back to sorcery because he believes that work is more useful to society and worthwhile.

Admittedly, Higuruma starts in the same place as Nanami, wanting to do his work as a defense attorney even though the odds are stacked against him, instead of being a prosecutor or a judge because he doesn't want to turn his eyes away from others.

However, herein lies the rub, while they share the desire to do a job that's useful for others, especially people who can't really fight for themselves, and they both work hard thankless jobs Nanami never develops a superiority complex about it.

Nanami never thinks of the people he helps as weak and inferior. In fact, he criticizes for only fighting for his ego. He doesn't separate the strong and the weak as different categories, he just does his job out of a sense of duty.

Higuruma is compared to Gojo in terms of his raw talent as a Jujutsu Sorcerer, a modern sorcerer who learned domain expansion, and domain amplification in less than a month and then reverse cursed technique in a few minutes when pressed by Sukuna. He was also considered a genius at lawschool as well who could have easily climbed the ranks further if he didn't stay a defense attorney.

Higuruma does his job out of a perceived duty to keep his eyes open to justice, but he still looks down on those same people he's defending. He sees them as a category separate to himself, they are the weak defendants and he is the savior.

Now, who has a talent similiar to Gojo, started in a place of wanting to help the weak out of a sense of duty, while also harboring a superiority complex against them because he was considered such a genius? Ding, ding, ding you get no points for that one, it's Geto.

"The weakness of the victim. The weakness of the accused. Ugly that's what I thought every time I tried to help anyone." "What I saw was nothing out of the ordinary. A hideous evil, known to everyone."

They're both characters who had impossibly hard jobs who still put their noses down to the grindstone and did their jobs out of a sense of justice, or obligation, or because they upheld themselves to a higher moral standard, only to get sick of it from the sense that none of their actions were making a difference and also the ingratitude of people they were trying to save.

They're also, despite being geniuses incredibly fragile ego-wise. Geto has a hero complex, and when Toji easily defeats him, nearly kills Gojo, and kills Rika in front of him he's shown he's a normal person like the rest of the world and can't deal, even saying spiteful words to Gojo that if he had all of Gojo's strength anything he wanted would be possible. This is coming from Geto who had always treated Gojo like an equal and never envied him up until this point.

Then there's Higuruma who calls the victims of an unfair justice system ugly and weak because they ummm... stare at him.

LIke, wow! They're going to go to jail for a long time for a crime they didn't even do, and they're just a little bit upset about it?

How dare they.

They're looking for someone to blame because they're in a bad situation and they're freaking out?

This perfectly human reaction is called "ugly" because Higuruma sees himself in a superior category to these people. He calls empathy looking at someone's weaknesses, and he felt the people he tried to sympathize with and understand were ugly.

I mean yeah I guess freaking out when they were going to prison for a crime they didn't commit and blaming Higuruma who was overworking himself trying to help them wasn't very cash money of them, but you know what else isn't very chill?

Flipping out and murdering a bunch of people the exact moment you're granted a power like Jujutsu by the culling games. Geto and Higuruma see themselves in a category superior to the weak people who sometimes aren't perfect victims and sometimes aren't grateful for their sacrifices, but when given power how exactly do they use it?

Geto after snapping quickly takes over the same cult that killed Riko Amanai an innocent girl, and uses it for much more nefarious purposes. Higuruma quickly becomes a much worse person than the supposed ugly crimminals he was defending the second, the literal second he's granted power.

Geto and Higuruma are just as capable of being bad victims as the same kind of bad victims they looked down on. They're just as affected by trauma, and just as willing to do bad things when put into bad situations because guess what... they're still human. The strong are equally as human as the weak. They see themselves as better than others, and their altruism isn't 100% altruistic (but to be honest no altruism is completely unselfish) because it comes from a place of perceived charity work. When they are hit with the realization that they are just as human, and therefore just as capable of erroring they can't cope.

Which is where we finally get to my point, if Choso is not allowed to die for atonement then why does the story kill off Higuruma and grant him his death wish?

Here's where I tie him to Geto again. (A lot of characters parallel with Geto really including Yuji several times but that's a different post, like Higuruma doesn't have nearly the same bodycount as Geto and he doesn't have any genocidal ambition but that's why he's a character foil and not the exact same character.)

Arguably, Geto also had a death wish that was granted by Gojo himself at the tragic end of Jujutsu Kaisen Zero. While he never directly says so like Choso and Higuruma do there are plenty of lines that indicate it.

He says that he can't be happy from the bottom of his heart in this world, that's the same as basically saying he can't continue living in the world. Years earlier in Hidden Inventory in a panel that parallels this scene he also says that he'd willingly let Gojo kill him and there'd be meaning in that death. At the end of Zero, Geto is crawling away from Yuta ready to continue the fight again and when Gojo suddenly appears he basically makes no attempts to resist.

You could even say that Geto was throwing his life away in pursuit of an impossible dream to begin with. In the light novel adaptation of this scene, the narrator even speculates that the world was simply too cruel a place for Geto to live in.

'...no matter what, I hate non-sorcerers. But it's not like I hate everyone at Jujutsu Tech. It's just...' It's just that it was what Geto had to do. In some ways, Geto and Yuuta were the same. Geto was too sincere. To someone like him, the reality that the world of sorcerers presented to him was just too cruel. '...that in a world like this, I couldn't be truly happy from the bottom of my heart.'

So arguably Geto had a death wish too, and that wish was granted by Gojo in the end, while Choso's was denied.

To live for the purpose of being yourself. And for that goal, Geto could only continue to pursue his twisted dream, drowning himself in the curse that lies in the gap between ideal and reality. This was the final confession of a man who could only choose to warp himself, who had erased himself in pursuit of his goals. The only person who could bear such a curse was Gojo Satoru.

The prose even further compares Geto to Yuta in how they're too sincere, and how Geto can't change himself in the face of a cruel world. Geto dies not because of his death wish though that's part of it, but because of his inability to adapt and grow.

Then we reach Higuruma, who is literally a DEFENSE ATTORNEY, who is supposed to sympathize with accused murderers, and even actual murderers that he has to defend at court. Yet, this DEFENSE ATTORNEY, can't see a single reason to live and atone and redeem himself for the murders he's committed.

Higuruma's a defense attorney, but his cursed technique is a prosecutor and a judge that hands out death sentences. Despite his stated goal of being a defense attorney and wanting to sympathize with human weakness, in the end he cannot forgive crimminals and he also cannot forgive himself.

If anything, the difference between Choso and Higuruma is that Choso still has things to live for. He has a death wish and a wish to atone, but what keeps him going is his desire to protect Yuji. Higuruma the DEFENSE ATTORNEY has given up his role as a protector and is only dealing out punishments.

A character who is still capable of growing and changing in a narrative usually lives, unless they're a mentor to be sacrificed like Nanami. A character who does not grow either doesn't get screentime or they die. Higuruma couldn't see forgiveness or atonement for crimminals, he could only see punishment and because of that when he became a crimminal too he accepted his punishment and died.

#higuruma hiromi #jjk higuruma #jjk meta #metasks #geto suguru #itadori yuji

[linkspooky]

Hi! Thanks for your tremendous work, it's always a pleasure to read your blog! I just wanted to ask your opinion on Hidden Inventory / Premature Death Arc. I know this one is important to make parallels on different characters' stories, but I for me this arc is a surprise. I mean why would Gege suddenly make us involve in the future? 🥲 I just don't understand how he could come to telling us the stories from the past. Do you find it fitting?

Jujutsu Kaisen is a story primarily about cycles: the previous generation giving way to the newer one, spring turning into summer. In particular it's about the passing of the torches between generations. The elders in Jujutsu Society resist what is natural, they are such hardline traditionalists they often sacrifice the young because they refused to give way and let the new generation replace them.

Gojo Satoru's ideals which are in opposition to the elders state that not only should children be allowed to live out their youths, they should surpass their elders. Gojo is staunchly opposed to say, the elitist Zen'in who believe themselves the strongest, or even Sukuna the greater sorcerer of all time, in the fact he wants the kids he's raising to grow stronger than him.

On the flip side, Jujutsu Kaisen is also about negative cycles, like the curses which can never truly die so are exorcised only to be reformed. It's also about the cycle of abuse, such as Toji being abused by the Zen'in, only to abandon his own son in turn. The flashback arc is necessary, because the problems the current generation are facing started with the previous one. These problems persist because the cycle is unbroken.

Tengen in their explanation states that the distortion that caused Kenjaku's plans to succeed in the modern day happened eleven years ago, and he lists two reasons why, first Zen'in Toji who was not affected by cursed energy, and second Geto who could control curses.

Toji is hailed as the destroyer of destinies because he's free form cursed energy, but as for a more meta-textual reason why Toji gets as much focus in story as he does, is because much like Maki he's a product of the worst abuses of sorcerer society.

There's a reason for this line here when Toji appears before the collected members of the Zen'in Clan, Naobito the head, Maki the Toji of her generation, and Megumi who was almost sold to them and is Toji's son who he abandoned therefore another link in the chain of abuse.

All of these characters are effected by the cycle of abuse in the Zen'in Clan, yes, even Naobito and later on Naoya who appear to be at the top. It's that whole "Toxic Masculinity harms men" thing too. Naobito was not born a drunken, abusive jerk and he was likely not a good father in any capacity considering the way Naoya acts.

They're all trapped in the cycle known as the Zen'in Clan, and they all stare on in envy to the one they think is free, Toji, who escaped and became the sorcerer killer. Toji who, the whole clan was secretly fearful of because they believed he had the capability of killing them / also according to Naoya's take looked down on him because he was an otherworldly strength they did not recognize and tried to suppress him to make themselves feel superior.

Either way, Toji is someone who they have put down their entire life because he wasn't born to meet their standards, because he's something new and different from tradition and the big three houses are the worst traditionalists of Jujustu Society. The Toji they all fear however, is a monster created by the Zen'in Clan themselves. Despite being abused by toxic masculinity, Toji is also toxic masculinity incarnate. He drinks, gambles all of his money away, he's an absentee father, and his greatest onscreen time is shooting a girl who's about Mai's age in cold blood. If Mai was the ultimate victim of the Zen'in Clan's toxic masculinity, then Riko is also the ultimate victim of Toji's masuclinity which didn't just target sorcerers but reached out and targeted innocent girls (Riko) and children (Megumi).

The explanation of who Toji was in the past, how he both killed Riko and drove the wedge between Geto and Gojo's friendship creating the first dsiruption in the cycle is important because in the modern day the Zen'in Clan has not broken the cycle. The abuse of the Zen'in Clan is so bad, that one generation later they've already manufactured another Toji.

While Maki's rise to power is glorified a little bit too much, in story the fact that the cycle has repeated itself is not a good thing. Maki's lost her chance of happiness and reconciliation with Mai, she's won against the Zen'in but it's a pyrrhic victory, she's now strong at the cost of everything else. As I said before Mai is also a clear parallel to Riko, someone who just wanted to live a normal life cut down in the prime of her youth by a member of the Zen'in, who's death then sparks another person to spiral.

They're just girls who longed for an ordinary life and be together with their loved ones, and Maki and Geto are both haunted by the fact that they were unable to save them in the aftermath. Geto's actions are spurred by the way the world carelessly killed Riko, and Maki gives up on reforming the Zen'in Clan and chooses destruction after they swallow up Mai.

The flashback chapters do more than just give parallels between say Gojo and Geto's friendship and the current friendship between Megumi and Yuji, or even give us Gojo's backstory and insight to his character they also go to great lengths to show us how much things have not changed in the modern day Jujutsu World.

While the distortion that drove Toji to do what he did began in the Zen'in Clan, Geto is basically driven by the faults of Jujutsu Society as a whole. The death of Riko is his eye opening moment where he learns the truth of their society, the young are sacrificed for the old. It's not just the fact Riko died, but afterwards he witnessed crows of people appluading for it, and Toji acting like that death was nothing. There's also the fact her death / sacrifice was ordered by Jujutsu Society in the first place, but Geto thought he could overcome that cycle with strength alone until he couldn't. Geto's monologue that leads to his slow breakdown even refers to being a sorcerer as "an endless cycle."

The three years of Geto and Gojo's youth is referred to their spring, whereas Premature Death takes place in summer. Not coincidentally, in story Summer is referred to as the worst possible season for curses because curses accumulate during that time.

Jujusu Kaisen is about cycles, and the inability to escape them. Geto and Gojo's springtime of youth turns to summer, Geto begins to have doubts because of his inability to protect Riko, and his witnessing of sorcerers dying around him.

It's not just Geto's superiority complex, or his increasing antipathy for the weak normal people who demand sorcerers exorcise curses for them because they can't defend themselves. Geto also bears witness to the continued death of children around him. It's not just a hazard of the job, sorcerer society continually sacrifices young people to uphold the strict traditions of the elders.

Geto is moved by the mistreatment of the young in a way Gojo is, Riko's death is what opens his eyes, a few days Geto goes to the village he witnesses the brutal death of Haibara and Nanami's own feelings of helplessnes to stop it, and then his breaking point is when he sees two twin girls who are sorcerers ganged up on and imprisoned by an entire town, the same way that the indifferent crowds cheered for Riko's death and the same way sorcerer society considered Riko an expendable sacrifice to maintain Tengen.

Sorcerer Society's callous indifference to both the deaths of their sorcerers, but especially the young is what drives Geto to his breaking point. This is also the source of Gojo's ideals, because he realizes something went wrong with Geto and he doesn't want that mistake to repeat.

“For people like us, we naturally know how to get rid of the poisons within their heart. But for youths who hold onto a lot of sentimental feelings, it’s another matter altogether. Their heart might collapse just from getting struck by poison once.” “Isn’t it an adult’s duties to rid poison from a child’s heart? As a teacher, you should know this better than me, right?” [Light novel 1: Ressurection Puppet]

In Gojo's case he is actively trying at least, to raise kids in a way that they won't break like Geto did. It's the loss of Geto which inspires his current ideals. However, to dwell on this briefly Gojo is also still a very flawed mentor because he's a product of the system who raised him.

Kenjaku comes back in the form of Geto's body to defeat Gojo. Then Sukuna ends up taking Megumi's body away from him. There's a pattern here, two people who Gojo has a strong connection too have their bodies taken away from him. In Megumi's case this is where Gojo has failed to break the cycle because of his stated intetions, because Gojo didn't adopt Megumi to help him after his father died, Gojo swooped in to take Megumi because he was a potential weapon he could use against the elders.

The flashback arc ends with Gojo making his slightly predatory deal with Megumi, by threatening his sister's happiness unless he complies and lets Gojo train him instead of the Zen'in. Megumi is shown to be a child that's continually having trouble growing up throughout the story, because of his broken home situation.

The ending of Hidden Inventory could have been Gojo learning his lesson and breaking the cycle in regards to Megumi, but he deliberately did not, and so once again the problems the main characters are facing now is created by the failures of the past.

Gojo Mr. "I can totally beat up on Megumi, it's fine."

In this case though, Hidden Inventory is also about how the problems of the past are plagueing Megumi's life, because the primary villain of it is his father, and the ending of the whole arc is us seeing his first encounter with Gojo. Megumi is in this case the latest youth swallowed up by the old, because Sukuna is quite literally a member of the previous generation physically stealing his body away from him to prolong his life long after he died.

Tsumiki's death is also a repeat of the death of Mai Zen'in, and Riko Amanai. It's once again the death of an innocent being swallowed up by the toxic masculinity of Jujutsu Society, all while the person who wanted to protect them is completely helpless to stop it. Gojo also took responsibility for Megumi, and Tsumiki both and later on couldn't live up tot hat responsibility, Tsumiki is dead and Megumi is possessed.

The Hidden Inventory flashback arc is there to establish what is basically the beginning of the cycle in the story, so we can see later on how this cycle is repeating itself again and again without being broken even this late (200 chapters) into the story. With the eventual hope that if the adults like Gojo can't fully break the cycle, then the kids he raised will be able to do so in his place.

#jjk meta #metasks #suguru geto #satoru gojo #toji fushiguro #toji zenin #maki zenin #mai zenin #riko amanai #hidden inventory #tsumiki fushiguro #megumi fushiguro

[linkspooky]

Alright so I sent this a few days ago but since tumblr ate it here it is again: Do you think Megumi has ever lived for himself? Personally I'm in the camp that he hasn't. If you think about it he's always lived for someone else (Tsumiki) or told what to do all his life (Gojo). I am a corrupt!Megumi truther and I was wondering what your take was on this since I think if the corrupt allegations are true, Megumi's gonna go fucking ape shit with all of that in mind personally.

I love reading your analysis so i'm really curious to see your take on this!

Hello to a fellow corruption megumi truther!

The short answer for this is: No, he hasn't.

I assume you want the long answer though, which will take awhile to answer. To begin with though let's define what "living for yourself" is. There's two two possible definitions I can come up with off hand.

Number One: Living for yourself is having agency. Basically it means having the power over your life to make your own decisions. Is Megumi in control of his life? Does what he wants matter?

Number Two: Living for yourself means being selfish. In this context it would mean is Megumi truly entirely selfless in his devotion to both Tsumiki and Yuji or is there an element to selfishness as well?

I'll answer both of these underneath the cut.

EGO

Megumi's stated motivation is to selfishly save others. On further elaboration in the Origin of Obeidence arc what he means is that he became a sorcerer to protect a few loved ones like Yuji and Tsumiki because he does not want to see good people suffer.

Even in the end of the Hidden Inventory flashback, it's shown to us that Megumi made the decision as a child to go with Gojo rather than the Zen'in Clan on the basis that Tsumiki would be miserable in the Zen'in. He made that life altering decision for Tsumiki's sake rather than his own.

He even says in his flashback dedicated to Tsumiki that he finds the idea of saving people as a Jujutsu Sorcerer stupid. In an interesting inversion to Geto in Hidden Inventory, Megumi doesn't really feel obligated to protect weaker people out of some higher minded ideals. He doesn't believe it's his duty to help everyone, he'll even argue against going out of their way to save strangers if they're pressed on time.

Which is why he's chosen to elevate Tsumiki and Yuji over everyone else and dedicate himself to saving them instead. That is Megumi's motivation, his choice, he's choosing to save the few out of the many. His reason for being a Jujutsu Sorcerer ties to this as well, because he's not motivated by getting stronger like Gojo, he's not out to save as many people as possible like Yuji. Being a Jujutsu Sorcerer is just something that will give him the ability to protect his loved ones.

I bring up Megumi's motivation to emphasize that Megumi is making choices. Agency is the ability to make your own choices and take control in your life. Even if I'm not going to elaborate on how Megumi is someone who's basically been handed off to different people and has had little say in what he wants to do his whole life, he's still capable of making some choices of his own.

When he requests for Gojo to save Yuji, Gojo interrogates him about if that's what he personally wants and Megumi confirms it. He's going against what Jujutsu Society considers right and instead making his own selfish choice in the matter.

He says the same to Noritoshi more or less, that he's trying to follow his internal conscience rather than what other people think is right. THis is to contrast him to Noritoshi who's specifically trying to be the ideal heir for the Kamo Clan elders, so he can inherit the clan and then make it a place where his mother can belong.

Megumi is capable of making his own choices and deciding for himself, however the vast majority of time he does not do that. The panel ahead is another example of that, when the more complex politics of the Jujutsu World is brought up Megumi mentions he doesn't care.

He's capable of being decisive, but tends to be indecisive and flippant about a lot of things. One of the exmaples I bring up is how much he dismisses the possibility that Sukuna might be after him, because he cares more about Yuji's life than his own. Therefore when Yuji insists it's dangerous for Megumi to stay near him, Megumi ignores it.

Megumi is someone who has had a lot of decisions made for him in his life. He didn't choose to be a sorcerer. Gojo offered him a choice that wasn't a choice. Either he goes to the Zen'in and be a sorcerer but they'll treat Tsumiki horribly, or he goes with Gojo but Tsumiki might have a chance at a normal life.

His decision isn't made on the basis of his well being but his sister's. Gojo also walked up to a five year old child and had them make a choice that would affect the rest of their life. Not only that he exorted labor out of that child as collateral for uh.... giving that child money so he doesn't starve to death.

Megumi wasn't raised as a child, he was raised as a sorcerer. He was raised with the implicit idea that he owed Gojo and that he'd be a future return on Gojo's investment in him. Neither of these things make Megumi inclined to make decisions about his own life... because when have his opinions mattered? When has he ever been in control of anything?

He's essentially a foster child passed between different homes that has no permanent place of belonging or family. Toji not only left him alone so often he can't even remember his father's face, but then he remarried Tsumiki's mom and abandoned both children permanently. Afterwards he finds out his father sold him, and the person who apparently "rescued" him from the Zen'in only did so to come into his life to take advantage of him.

Megumi had little control over any of that. Which is why late into his teenage years he still doesn't try to make decisions for himself or assert himself because he's had so many choices of his taken away before this. He's not allowed to do what he wants he has the massive responsibility of being a sorcerer thrust on his head because he owes Gojo for not letting him starve to death.

This results in Megumi putting little to no value in himself, and even being shown as suicidal at several points going out of his way to try sacrificing his own life. Gojo comments on his tendency to sacrifice bunt rather than swing for the fences but he doesn't properly diagnose the reason why.

Megumi tries to match the others around him and downplays his own strength, because that's what he's been doing his own life. He doesn't live according to his own wants, but what other people (Gojo) want for him and how they cane use him.

IT'S OKAY TO BE SELFISH

On the flip side despite the fact that Megumi lives primarily for other people, he can actually be quite the selfish character. His habit of pedestalizing both Tsumiki and Yuji isn't as good or noble as it seems. In fact Megumi romanticizes his own devotion to Tsumiki in particular into a sort of sleeping beauty and her knight protecting her fantasy. You could even say he's white knighting her...

Even in the story itself we never learn who the real Tsumiki is. We don't know what her thoughts or opinions are. We only ever see her through Megumi's eyes, we only know what Megumi feels about her. Megumi has obviously made her out to be some sort of perfectly innocent suffering victim.

She is sleeping beauty on her bed. The thing about sleeping beauty is she has no agency. She can't argue with you. She can't say cruel things to you. She can't ever leave her bed. She's just the perfect princess always asleep and in need of someone to rescue and take care of her.

I don't think Megumi wants Tsumiki to stay asleep forever in bed though, part of his motivation is saving her from whatever curse she's affected by. However, by making Tsumiki the princess to his knight he's actively taking away a lot of her agency. He's not taking her opinions or what she wants into consideration. When you decide to put someone on a pedestal like that, the one-sided nature of that viewpoint robs the pedestaled of any agency in the relationship.

I do think Gege is deliberately paralleling their story with sleeping beauty, almost every time she's mentioned she's shown as either asleep or associated with flowers that are symbols of innocence and purity. She's cited as his model idea of a good person. He has her up on that pedestal. The one time that we see Megumi interacting with Tsumiki after she wakes up (though it's actually Yorozu) he tells her to go back to sleep.

It's like Megumi wants to wrap Tsumiki in bubble wrap and put her somewhere where she's safe, so he can continue to live out his fantasy of protecting her. While I don't doubt Megumi loves his sister considering he basically sold himself to Jujutsu High for her sake there's a twisted element to this as well.

I'm going to reference Tokyo Ghoul here. There's a scene where Eto outlines that Kanae a character who's been desperately trying to get their cousin / love interest (I know, gross) Tsukiyama to recover from their sickness and leave there bed that all along they didn't really want Tsukiyama to recover. As long as Tsukiyama stayed in his bed then Kanae would have total control over him and he'd never be able to leave her, or love someone else.

That Kanae's feelings towards Tsukiyama aren't pure love and devotion, but rather a possessiveness that arises from her fear of being alone. Which is likely the same for Megumi, if he loses Tsumiki he has no one therefore he lives his entire life for protecting her.

Megumi is deeply motivated by his own abandonment issues and his fear of being alone, which is why to him his own life matters absolutely nothing in comparison to losing either Yuji or Tsumiki permanently. At the same time his protectiveness of Tsumiki can cross over into possessiveness considering his unhealthy viewpoint of her and his habit of putting her on a pedestal, making his feelings more one sided. Tsumiki being in that bed gives him a person save, a reason to live, someone to fight for.

On top of that Megumi pretty regularly disregards Tsumiki's feelings. The one thing we ever se of her in his flashback is how much she hates the fact that Megumi's constantly getting into fights.

Megumi not only completely ignores that, but he also starts using Tsumiki as an excuse to be violent. In the culling games he commitss unnecessary violence in her name.

When he enters the culling games he says (i'm paraphasing here because it's funny) "I don't know about Yuji but I'm TOTALLY WILLING to kill people." Then he goes on to show that it's true.

Megumi hears the announcement that Yuji has completed his side of the mission and that he can transfer points between players, meaning it's no longer necessary to kill people. Immediately after that he goes out of his way to finish off a man who's already on the ground and prone in the most brutal manner possible. He doesn't need to kill that guy, Megumi just does, and then he justifies it as saying it's a part of helping Tsumiki break free from the culling games.

His brutal takedown of that man is a pretty clear parallel to the way that Toji took out Gojo at the end of their first fight. If you're being paralleled to Toji then that's definitely a bad sign.

Megumi is someone who's had little control over his own life, and one way he exerts that control is through violence. The flip side of picking and choosing who to save, is picking and choosing who lives and who dies. Megumi's shown he's perfectly willing to make judgements on who's worthy of salvation and who's trash that needs to be thrown out.

He almost violently attacks this girl later on and the only thing that stops him is the idea that Tsumiki might disappear. Megumi lashes out in violence on a pretty regular basis, but it's understandable because the only thing he's been taught his whole life is that he needs to get stronger. That's what he's been raised for, his potential to become someone on Gojo's level because of the cursed technique. THat's what he's been told his whole life is the solution to every problem, get stronger, get stronger, get stronger.

THe Zen'in only cared about strength and so abused Toji all of his life until the only thing that mattered to him in life was proving that he was stronger than the sorcery world that rejected him. Which turned Toji into an incredibly violent person who kills others with little remorse.

Megumi similiarly had his whole childhood taken from him, because someone wanted to raise him as a weapon against the elders due to the cursed technique he was born with. Megumi's only value as a person is his strength, so he falls back on violence. In order to try to exert control over his life he lashes out in violence and desperately tries to get stronger.

Which is why the Megumi corruption arc conspiracy theories exist. Megumi hasn't broken away from this violent cycle at all. He's gotten stronger and more confident in using his abilities, but in every other way he's just growing more violent over time and more willing to kill others to get what he wants. He is a character that's selfless in his motivation and at the same time blind to his own selfishness. Because he is unaware of it he can't really do anything to fix or improve upon it which is why we see him steadily getting worse.

So if Megumi's violent behavior is a negative reaction to the trauma of his life then you can just imagine how he's going to react when he finally regains his body and has to live in a world where Tsumiki is dead. I doubt it's going to be pretty.

#jjk meta #megumi fushiguro #fushiguro megumi #tsumiki fushiguro #toji zenin #toji fushiguro #satoru gojo #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen theory #jujutsu kaisen analysis #metasks

[linkspooky]

Any theories as to why Sukuna suddenly remembers Yorozu’s words looking at Gojo? Is he like suddenly having a “finally a worthy opponent” moment? Or is it actually about love?

While I don't think it is explicitly about romantic love, I think it is Sukuna having a premonition about Gojo fulfilling Yorozu's statement. That Gojo is the only person in the world that could understand the isolation that Sukuna feels as being the absolute peak of the sorcery world.

Which is why we get such tonal whiplash as Gojo supposedly fighting the final battle against Sukuna who is currently in his student's body, and yet despite what should be a high stakes situation Gojo and Sukuna are both palling around like they're buddies.

@ Lightning446 at twitter clarifies the translation of Sukuna remembering Yorozu's line in this tweet.

Yorozu clearly meant this statement in a romantic fashion. While her love is twisted, one-sided and played off mostly as a gag it's important to remember the thing which inspired her love was seeing Sukuna completely isolated while being worshipped by everyone.

Her love for him comes from a desire to provide him compansionship and remind him that he's not alone. Whether or not Sukuna actually feels lonely because of his position in the world, or if this is just a projection on Yorozu's part hasn't been revealed to us yet.

Despite Sukuna's importance in the story we don't get inside of his head a lot, and when we do he mainly talks about battle and fighting. When others refer to Sukuna they only talk about him as a calamity, or a force of nature.

Sukuna also doesn't seem to care much about relationships, his entire identity is formed around being the strongest, and he even says that if he were to lose he'd just be a corpse.

Yorozu herself seems to perceive that the only person that Sukuna would ever listen to or acknowledge is someone just as powerful as he is, which is why she tries to show her heart to him through battle. Sukuna does not care for the weak, and he doesn't live outside of the constant warfare between sorcerers so that's the only language he understands. Yorozu's desire was to win against Sukun to force him to try understanding her or seeing her as an individual, but it didn't work simply because she wasn't strong enough.

Which implies that the only person that Sukuna would ever treat like another human being, rather than food, or a servant like Ura Ume is someone equally as strong as him. Which Gojo has the potential to be. Sukuna even refers to everyone as food.

At the moment all he sees Gojo as is another meal to consume. He doesn't even consider him a fish, he's a nameless fish, because to Sukuna the individuality of other people does not matter. Sukuna is the ultimate ego, and in comparison to him everyone else may as well be faceless. However, I think saying Gojo can be the only one who teaches Sukuna about love comes from the fact that Gojo sort of views people the same way. He's not tyrannical like Sukuna, but he still views himself as someone standing above the crowd.

Gojo Satoru is in his element when he's alone. Gojo who when everyone around him is asked to describe him, all they say is "He's the strongest."

The only person that Gojo ever acknowledge in his entire life as an equal and called a friend was Geto, and that was also because Geto was the only person who could provide a challenge to him in a fight. Not only did he acknowledge Geto as a friend though, he also listened to him. Gojo developed a stronger moral thinking because he talked to Geto and learned to come and see things through his point of view especially the responsibility that Jujutsu Sorcerers have.

Gojo's not an innately good or bad person, he's formed and taught by the relationships he's had in his life, and Geto arguing against him and speaking with him helped him form a stronger moral identity and changed him as a person. As opposed to Sukuna who's never acknowledge anyone other than himself.

Does Sukuna crave companionship though?

That's the big question here, because Sukuna seems perfectly content on his throne, and to him losing to someone or being weaker than someone is the same as death.

In Gojo's case he clearly does crave companionship and admits this part about himself. His desire not to leave anyone alone again probably comes from two sources, number one his guilt he didn't reach Geto in time before his downfall, but also his feelings that Geto left him alone by choosing to side on an opposite side of the conflict and then eventually die. They were the strongest together, and without him Gojo is the strongest alone.

However, Shoko also points out that Gojo and Sukuna's shared belief that the only person in the world who could understand them and provide some kind of companionship for them is someone as equally strong as them is a false one.

Shoko was already there for Gojo all along, it's just Gojo ignored her. Gojo is so hung up on this idea of strength, that being strong makes him some kind of special person, too far above others to ever be understood that he doesn't even notice he's the one choosing to be alone. There are people in Gojo's life trying to support him and he either ignores them, or just doesn't let them be close.

He may trust Ijichi, but he also constantly bullies him and reminds him of how weak he is. Shoko is a constant companion but he acts like she's not his friend. Utahime is also someone he belittles constantly despite needing her help with things. Gojo is the source of his own isolation.

Which speaks to Gojo and Sukuna's shared ego. They're being a little buddy buddy while trying to kill each other, because they both have the same kind of egotistical belief that the only person who could understand them is someone just as strong.

Gojo and Sukuna may also be all ego, but they're both lacking in identity because of this choice to just not see anyone else as their equal. As I said your identity is influenced by the people you meet in your life and interact with on a daily basis. You know the contours of your soul by bumping up against others. So, Gojo who is in complete isolation who is he exactly? We know what he's capable of, we know his talent as a sorcerer, but do we know who he is?

For both of them, in order to be a person and have relationships with other people on equal footing they would have to let go of their title of being the strongest. So maybe that's the lesson. That as long as you're the strongest, you're always going to be alone because you have to be human to have relationships with other people. That the only way that Gojo and Sukuna could learn this lesson though, is to lose.

As a final note, it's possible Gege is trying to parallel the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Gilgamesh is the king of Uruk who rules his city as a tyrant taking the first right to every wife. The citizens plea to a sky god for help, so they create a man out of the earth Enkidu to be a counterbalance to Gilgamesh.

When Enkidu hears that Gilgamesh takes brides on their wedding night, he goes to Uruk to challenge him. They wrestle each other to a standstill, and when Gilgamesh is his equal they becoem friends. Gilgamesh learns humblness through his relationship with Enkidu, and then when he dies he learns his own mortality. At which point he goes on a journey to find eternal life, only to lose both eternal life and eternal youth.

At the end of the story he returns to his city as a proper ruler. Sukuna is also someone who thinks he is a godlike person, and someone who tries to defy death and return to life a thousand years later. However, in his story he never was humbled, and never met an equal like Enkidu so Sukuna remains a tyrant.

While I doubt Sukuna is going to learn the meaning of love and friendship, he does provide an image of what Gojo could have been like if he had never met an equal in Geto. Which is a pretty scary picture all things considered.

#jjk meta #metasks #ryomen sukuna #gojo satoru

[linkspooky]

Hiii spooky I how have you been enjoying season 2 so far? After seeing the characters being brought to life I’ve realised one thing and that is that Suguru is really hard for me to grasp and I don’t know how to portray him. On one hand he seems dark and brooding and serious but then he’s also goofy and deeply caring and he’s not ashamed to show it. He has lots of soft smile but then we see him smile like 😊 that when Riko manages to annoy him. He seems to have so many facets in a way that other characters just don’t…? and maybe in theory his behaviour and parts of his personality seem contradictory, but it doesn’t actually feel like it is?? because he doesn’t really put on any mask, at least his teen self doesn’t, and you can kinda tell what he’s feeling… he’s not as loud as Gojo, he doesn’t really express himself verbally, but to me he’s still more open than him. You can see his emotions on his face or in his body language because he doesn’t really try to hide them, whereas Gojo as loud and expressive as he is.. I often find myself struggling to tell what exactly he’s feeling.

I’ve also seen many people portray Geto as “nice and polite but that’s just for appearances and he’s actually bad and cruel” which feels like a pretty flat interpretation of him… I’m really struggling as you can tell I think I might be missing the point entirely lol I just wanted to know your thoughts on it.

Hello, anon! Thank you for the opportunity to talk about Geto! You are correct in that he's a far more nuanced character than a lot of people give him credit for. The popular fandom belief is that Geto was lying about his ideals all along, but I think it's the opposite. Rather than a liar, Geto's real problem is that he's true to himself to a fault. I'll address your ask and talk more about this under the cut.

Fandom Geto

I’ve also seen many people portray Geto as “nice and polite but that’s just for appearances and he’s actually bad and cruel” which feels like a pretty flat interpretation of him… I’m really struggling as you can tell I think I might be missing the point entirely lol

In my opinion the fandom in general tends to flatten Geto's character for two reasons, number one they want to make Geto look worse to make Gojo look better by comparison. The second and more relevant is that they want to otherize Geto because his beliefs are so extreme. That someone who can slaughter people on that large of a scale must have been cruel to begin with, a normal person, especially a good one isn't capable of that.

Which I think misses the point. Geto wasn't shown as someone with cruel tendencies to begin with, the entire hidden inventory arc showed how much it took him to be pushed off the edge like that, with factors like trauma, witnessing the deaths of sorcerers his age, and the jaded adults around him who made no real attempts to reach out to him and help him in time all contributing factors to his downfall.

"An endless cycle of exorcism and consumption. Exorcise. Consume. It's a taste that nobody knows. The taste of a curse. Like ingesting a rag used to wipe up vomit. Exorcise. Consume. For whom? Ever since that day... it's been running through my head."

What makes this monologue so effective is it summarizes a year of Geto constantly questioning himself as his mental state deteriorates. I do believe Geto always looked down on the weak, but he did it the same way that Gojo did. He separated himself in a different category from others, both Gojo and Geto believed that they were on the side of the "strong" and that put them above others. It's just on top of that Geto believed that standing above others came with the obligation to protect them, and that was the part that came into question.

However, if he believed weak people were "monkeys" from the start, if his desire to protect them was a false belief than he wouldn't have taken an entire year of spiraling before he snapped. The manga wouldn't put such intense focus on #1 Geto's internal world, and #2 Geto struggling with trying to figure out what his ideals and beliefs really are if he was just hiding a darker and crueler set of beliefs.

For example, we have Maki a character who five minutes after the death of Mai decides to massacre the entire Zen'in Clan even the members who had absolutely nothing to do with it, as opposed to Geto who wrestled with the idea of it for a year, and Maki doesn't get the same accusation from the fandom of being cruel and violent all along. Geto's a character of internal struggle. His righteous nature is what led him astray. Not because he was lying to himself, but because he was trying to find what the right thing to do was. It's just his idea of right and wrong got eschew because of the incredibly grey and myopic nature of the Jujutsu World.

Geto's True Feelings

He seems to have so many facets in a way that other characters just don’t…? and maybe in theory his behaviour and parts of his personality seem contradictory, but it doesn’t actually feel like it is?? because he doesn’t really put on any mask, at least his teen self doesn’t, and you can kinda tell what he’s feeling…

I agree with your assesment that Geto is a character that's true to himself rather than a character that's putting up a false front. Geto is a character that contradicts himself a lot, one example is pointed out to us by Gojo. That he justifies his slaughter of non-sorcers for a bigger goal of creating a world without curses, and yet Geto himself isn't strong enough to actually make that ideal a reality. There's basically no scenario where he could have won, like theoretically maybe Gojo could have done it, but killing every single human being was just impossible for Geto.

Which is where we get to the point that Geto is twisting logic around to justify himself and his slaughter of innocents, but at the same time the Jujutsu Kaisen light novel adaptation of JJK0 says this isn't a lie, but rather Geto's attempt to remain true to himself.

To live for the purpose of being yourself. And for that goal, Geto could only continue to pursue his twisted dream, drowning himself in a curse that lies in the gap between ideal and reality. This was the final confession of a man who could only choose to wrap himself, who had erased himself in pursuit of his goals.

The gap between ideal and reality is a pretty significant phrase for describing Geto, because part of what broke Geto is he sees the world as how it should be, rather than how it is. Geto's failure is in part a failure to adapt when he sees the darker side of the world after Riko's murder.

In my opinion the animated version of this scene is far better than that of the manga. In the anime it shows Geto staring at the crowd joyously celebrating Riko's death who are all complicit in it while he tries to list off reasons why they don't need to take vigilante justice out on the crowd, beause there are systems in place that will punish these people on their own.

Geto is trying desperately to convince himself that these people will see justice, because the world is a fair place. All the while Gojo just walks away, because Geto's answer "There's no meaning in that" is a good enough answer for him. Geto desperately needs to search for a reason and convince himself that what they're doing is the right thing, whereas Gojo doesn't really share Geto's habit of questioning the world around him.

This moment reminds me of a quote of Megumi's at the beginning of the manga "Karma doesn't happen on its own" he later goes on to describe how the justice system and jujustu sorcerers are systems set in place to try to make the world a fairer place. Geto wants to believe that too, even when he's shown direct evidence that Jujutsu Society isn't idealistic at all.

Which, Gojo doesn't really question the society around him until after Geto's defection. He doesn't see a problem because Gojo is the perfectly fit cog, he's born into this society and he's the best at what he does. I think one important thing is that Gojo is the chosen one of the Gojo clan one of the three major houses. The golden child. Whereas Geto who is someone just as gifted as Gojo for the most part, has non-sorcerer parents and therefore was born outside of their society. Which it makes sense why he'd have more of an outsider's point of view, whereas Gojo can accept these things for a long time because that's just how they are, he grew up with this.

Geto's not lying to himself about his beliefs, rather he witnesses the world is not as just as he thought it was, and then struggles between two really opposite beliefs. Which is something Yuki Tsukumo pointed out to him.

Yuki: Do you hate non-jujutsu sorcerers? Geto? Geto: I don't know...I used to think Jujutsu Sorcerers existed to protect non-sorcerers, but recently I've been doubting whether or not non-sorcerers are worth fighting for... [insert monologue here] I don't know which are my true feelings. Yuki: Neither is. You're not at that stage yet. Looking down on non-sorcerers, resisting that feeling...those are just possibilities you've tought of. Whatever your true feeling is, you still have to decide.

If Geto wanted to slaughter non-sorcerers from the beginning it wouldn't be a deliberation for him. He wouldn't be arguing himself and trying to justify himself for over a year. Geto is basically caught between ideals and reality. The ideal is that his work as a sorcerer to protect people is good and making the world a fairer place. He wants to believe that there is meaning behind his work, that he's doing the right thing. The reality he's faced with is the senseless slaughter of people like Haibara. The idea that he is just a cog in the machine that will continually sacrifice more and more sorcerers. That therefore their sacrifice is not making the world a better place, and not justified. He can't face the reality that he and his friends are expendable... and really, who can?

"If being a Jujutsu Sorcerer is like running a marathon... what if what's at the end of that road is a mountain of our fellow sorcerer's dead corpses?"

Ironically, it's Geto's search for the right thing that leads him astray. He becomes unable to see any point in the continual sacrifices the strong sorcerers have to make for what he views as the ungrateful weak non-sorcerers. I don't think he believed that from the beginning though, because as you pointed out above his interactions with both Kuroi and Riko who are non-sorcerers shows a lot of care for their emotions and well-being. If he never cared about non-sorcerers, than he wouldn't have reacted as badly to Riko's death as he did.

he doesn’t really put on any mask, at least his teen self doesn’t, and you can kinda tell what he’s feeling… he’s not as loud as Gojo, he doesn’t really express himself verbally, but to me he’s still more open than him. You can see his emotions on his face or in his body language because he doesn’t really try to hide them, whereas Gojo as loud and expressive as he is.. I often find myself struggling to tell what exactly he’s feeling.

Gojo and Geto are foils and inversions to one another, so I agree with what you stated that while Gojo is loud his true feelings tend to be more concealed whereas Geto for the most part makes his care and concern demonstrably known in the first few chapters of hidden inventory.

There's the famous "Geto and Gojo both make fun of Utahime for being weak in different ways" that a lot of people cite as evidence for the fact Geto looked down on weak people all along, but as I stated above his way of looking down on them is he saw them as a seperate category than himself a strong person. However, I don't think that means his attempts at taking care of Riko are insincere.

Gojo and Geto are both shown as looking out for Riko, Geto does it in more obvious ways and Goo does it in more subtle ways, but that just shows the difference in their personality. Gojo is rude and obnoxious on the surface, but thoughtful on the inside. Whereas Geto true to his nature makes an effort to be considerate and look out for people. One of the reasons I put the conversation between Gojo and Geto as the banner image for this post is because it shows Geto's naturally considerate personality, going out of his way to ask if he's okay. Geto is direct. There's a mirror scene to that later where Gojo notices Geto has lost weight, showing he does in fact get a grasp that something is wrong with Geto, but chooses an indirect approach of asking for it.

Geto goes out of his way to give Riko more free time and time to spend with her friends even though it makes the mission more inconvenient because he recognizes these are her last few days on earth. It's Geto who notices that Kuroi is essentially family to Riko.

When Kuroi is kidnapped, Geto is deeply troubled by his failure and blames himself. Geto shows his concern in a direct way being troubled by Kuroi's disappearance, whereas Gojo shows his concern in an indirect way, setting up a kind of sink-or-swim test for Riko where he tells her she can only come with if she's ready to face the fact that Kuroi might be dead and she can't back out halfway through. All as a test of her resolve. They both care and have different ways of showing it.

Gojo shows his concern for Riko by insisting they stay another day for her sake, and Geto only argues against it because he's worried Gojo is pushing himself too much with his use of the limitless. Geto's visibly happy to see both Gojo and Riko enjoying thmeselves and views the scene with a soft smile. He reassures Kuroi not to worry about letting herself get kindapped because they handled it just fine.

They both cared about Riko, they both agreed to help her quit the merger. Geto's desire to protect her is one hundred percent sincere, this is when he still believes in his ideal of protecting the weak, and he's following that ideal through. That's why his way of reassuring her is saying "we're the strongest" because that's how the world is supposed to work in his ideals. The strong protect the weak, and if you're the strongest you should have no trouble protecting others.

When both the world and Geto fail to live up to that promise that's where he begins to question himself. Which is where I want to get to one of the major differences between Gojo and Geto. All centering around Geto's final words.

"In a world like this, I couldn't be truly happy from the bottom of my heart..."

There's a scene someone pointed out to me in a twitter thread at the end of the Shibuya arc where Nanami contemplates retiring to Malaysia just as he dies doing his job and fighting against many cursed spirits and then is executed by Mahito. All because he chose to stay and fight until the last minute. At the end of the arc, we see Mei Mei fled the battle half way through and is now comfortably sitting in a hotel room in Malaysia. Mei Mei is someone who is implied to abuse her younger brother, whereas Nanami is someone who stated it's the duty of adult sorcerers to protect children and goes out of his way to do that for Yuji.

One of them lives because she is selfish, and even an abuser, the other dies. The first is the kind of person that benefits from the corruption of Jujutsu Society, the second is swallowed up from it.

The line Geto couldn't be truly happy from the bottom of his heart also refers to this fact, Geto just couldn't cope with the reality of Jujutsu Society because it's an increidbly myopic and cynical place where the people who get ahead are selfish people who simply don't care about others and frequently use and abuse others to get ahead, and the ones who get swallowed up are people with good intentions like Nanami. This is the world he can't cope with. He's fundamentally incompatible with Jujutsu Society and driven out of it because he wants to do the right thing, not because he was evil to begin with.

Whereas Gojo also sees Jujutsu Soceity as something rotten don't make any mistake, but he's also someone who is able to function in Jujutsu Society much better that Geto because he was born inside of it. Geto is driven out and Gojo seeks reform from the inside because he's like the ideal of jujutsu society, and he was born to be. He's selfish, and egotistical, and he's so strong he can bully the elders and throw his weight around. Of course Gojo doesn't really abuse his power, that's what makes him so interesting a character, he has all this power and for the most part uses it responsibly to exorcise curses for the good of society rather than abuse it for his own sake.

However, he can stay within that society because he's used to it, a lot of things about that society he accepted how they were for a long time until he saw the toll it took on Geto. Gojo is the ideal of Jujutsu Society, he's held up as the model sorcerer of the corrupted society so it takes him a long time to spot where that corruption is. When he does he also wants to do something about it like Geto does, but he takes it in a more measured way he's not driven out because he's intrinsically a part of that society.

Whereas for Geto he's just one hundred percent incompatible with Jujutsu Society as a whole, one because his idealistic nature just doesn't mix well with a dog-eat-dog cynical society where everyone is out for their own gain and people like Mei Mei climb to the top. Number two, Geto himself has a very uncompromising nature. He's sincere to a fault. He doesn't really deal well with moral greys. He can only exist in a black and white world where he has clearly defined goals of good and evil, he just sort of flips white for black, and black for white.

Thus Gojo is much better at coping with that society as a whole and trying to find a way to work inside the system, but also to begin with he's not someone who naturally questions things the same way that Geto does. In fact in general I would say another point of foiling between them is as you pointed out, Geto is someone far more true to himself not wearing any masks, whereas Gojo's loud personality is a mask. We are privy to Geto's thoughts and his internal world, we basically spend the entire hidden inventory arc inside of his head. Whereas with Gojo he is so distanced from his own emotions oftentimes the audience themselves don't get to see what they really feel and are left guessing. Even the people around Gojo aren't really aware of what his real feelings are, his students and all his coworkers basically just summarize him as "he's the strongest."

Geto basically drowns inside his own head trying to figure out what his true emotions are, whereas Gojo is someone so distanced from what he really feels he's completely alienated himself from the people around him. Hence why Shoko can say stuff like "damnit, I've been right here all along for eleven years idiot" while Gojo monologues about how alone he is in front of her.

Which is what really makes them such good character foils. It's not one is good, one is bad, one is a liar, one is telling the truth, they're actually just both idiots.

#suguru geto #geto suguru #gojo satoru #satoru gojo #jjk meta #jujutsu kaisen meta #jujutsu kaisen theory #jujutsu kaisen #metasks #jujutsu kaisen anime

[linkspooky]

it's been rotting in my brain sm on there's so much similarities actually between geto and utahime. I know it seems hard to claim that but from their character designs, birthdays, and some of their values(they value teamwork and deeply care about others)..Also there's their butting heads dynamic with gojo who he has different ideas with like for geto, what being sorcerers is and for utahime, what being a teacher is. Idk why but regarding with gojo's history with geto who provoked change to gojo, it makes me think that maybe there's more in stall for utahime's role esp now she's in the biggest fight of the series and her "parallels" with geto ig (if im using the the right word for it??)

Don't ever feel bad about ranting in my inbox, because I do think you're onto something there's a connection between Geto and Utahime there despite the fact we never see them interacting onscreen. The biggest way they foil each other is essentially how they interact with Gojo. I said this before in a different post, but I do think the story is building up a relationship between Gojo and Utahime even if it's not necessarily a romantic one.

The biggest contrast between Gojo and Utahime is how they connect with other people around them, especially in regards to how they connect to children. Utahime is basically the only adult besides Nanami to ever show concern that one of her kids may have gotten hurt.

Utahime immediately takes action when there's a threat to one of her kids, whereas Gojo is famous for sending his class to get beat up by Geto in Jujutsu Kaisen Zero, in order to provoke Yuta. Their differences in how they treat people is also shown in how their students interact, the Tokyo Kids are all individualists, the Kyoto kids fight together as a group and have excellent team coordination.

Utahime is someone who treats the people in her life like, well people really, and makes an effort to connect with them. This is what parallels with Geto too, because the entire point of Geto's character is that he not only cares enough about his fellow sorcerers that he was the only one to forge a connection with Gojo, but he also was driven to his breaking point because he witnessed the pointless death of his companions.

Geto however, even past his breaking point continues to connect with the people around him. Gojo has coworkers, whereas Geto refers to his terrorist group as his family. Gojo doesn't treat Megumi as a child and acts like Megumi owes him for paying for his rent and making sure he doesn't end up homeless or with the Zen'in. Geto goes out of his way to adopt two traumatized children and act like a father to them. He's papa Geto.

Gojo avoids connection to the people around him, while Geto makes the effort to connect Gojo even says that he knew Geto would not unnecessarily hurt young sorcerers if he didn't need to which is why he had the confidence to send Inumaki and Panda his way.

Getos' response to this is to say "unlike you, I'm a kind person" and that's not entirely a joke, Geto does make an effort to be kind to the people in his life and be considerate to them whereas Gojo is defined by his distance to other people.

So Utahime acts like an actual teacher to her students, and her students get along as friends. Geto acts like a father to Nanako and Mimiko, and his allies consider each other a family. They're both sincere in their feelings in regards to others whereas Gojo is avoidant and usually hiding behind a mask.

The biggest difference between them however, is how they connect to Gojo. As I said, Utahime has the strong potential for connection to Gojo because she's the kind of teacher he should be. Utahime is even a much more positive influence on Shoko, who unlike GOjo and Geto they were able to manitain their friendship well past high school. They don't connect because Gojo doesn't respect her.

Utahime even says so "respect your elders." Gojo says his reason for bullying her is because she's weak, he doesn't do the same to Mei Mei because who the heck would pick on someone strong. In fact, he respects Mei Mei a lot more who blatantly abuses her brother and treats children poorly, than someone like Utahime who treats children well b/c Gojo only respects strong people. As if being strong is a virtue in and of itself.

Gojo and Utahime could have some sort of friendship or relatioship, but Gojo doesn't allow that to happen because he thinks the only person he could have connected with was someone as equally strong as him like Geto.

It's not just Utahime though, he also ignored Shoko despite the fact she's stuck by his side for more than ten years, even if they don't enjoy the kind of close friendship that he and Geto did.

In regards to their foiling, Utahime is like Geto someone who values not only her connections to other people, but also the children around her. However, because Gojo believes only someone as equally strong as him could understand him, they'll never be as close and Geto and Gojo were. Which is why Utahime's technique is kind of genius, she's not strong on her own but she enhances the strength of others. Just like her personality as someone who is naturally good at supporting others.

Gojo is someone desperately in need of that support, but he won't really allow anyone to help him or form a close friendship with him because of his insistence of always doing everything alone. Which is also something that happened in his friendship with Geto. Their friendship started to fall apart due to lack of communication when Gojo became the strongest and therefore started always taking missions on his own because he didn't need Geto's support anymore.

The biggest way they foil is that they both have the potential to connect with Gojo and naturally work well with him, because they cover his weak points (he's bad at cooperating with people, and does everything alone to a fault) but Gojo doesn't let them.

#jjk meta #metasks #utahime iori #satoru gojou #satoru gojo #suguru geto

[linkspooky]

hi Spooky! I just read your meta about Gojo's motivation in the fight and you brought up interesting points.

I thought Gojo was fighting in a way that he's trying to save Megumi, because if Gojo is really trying to eliminate Sukuna for good he would go for the most fatal blow, the brain, he knows that Sukuna can still come back even without heart (lungs and liver)... so I thought Gojo is probably trying to weaken Sukuna to "make room" for Megumi. Even if his facade is "carefree", at first he already warned Sukuna that he won't hold back, he seemed worried when he realized that Megumi is the one that got hit by UV. But now I'm worried about his character growth, is it like he's decreasing? or at least he's not showing something better than the Gojo who killed Toji - teen Gojo; what happened to the Gojo that claims to protect his students' youth and who is supposed to be the "good guy" in this fight...

I still think Gojo is fighting with the belief he can revive Megumi after he takes down Sukuna, but I agree with you anon his attitude towards the fight shows his lack of growth after Toji. Not only does Gojo reference Toji a couple of times like the battle is still fresh on his mind but his emotional state resembles the way he was when he fought Toji post-awakening as the "strongest." It wasn't just a happy-go-lucky facade at that point Gojo stated in his internal narration he wasn't fighting to avenge Riko: it really was just about defeating Toji and using his newfound power to reach his full potential.

It's understandable Gojo reacted that way in the moment though. He's seventeen, and it's probably alienating to have that much power thrust on your shoulders at seventeen. However, Gojo shows a clear lack of progress since that battle. Eleven years have passed since the battle with Toji, and Gojo's kind of trapped there mentally. He's still fighting for the same reasons he fought against Toji. Those lines could be applied to how he feels via Sukuna's possession of Megumi.

"Right now I'm not angry for you. Nor do I feel vengeful toward anyone. Right now, it's just that everything feels right."

Word of god supports this: Gege was asked directly if Gojo matured after the battle with Toji, and Gege explained instead of maturing he left the decision making up to Geto.

This is pretty consistent with Gojo and Geto's foiling with one another. Geto tends to be a deeply self-reflective character almost to a fault. While I'd argue that while Gojo is known by the fandom as the more selfish one, he is oddly someone who doesn't self reflect at all.

We know far more about Geto's internal world and how he sees things because of his internal narration. Honestly, if you compare the short time he's a focus character in Hidden Inventory to the entire rest of the manga Gojo receives a lot less internal dialogue. When Gojo does have internal narration it's almost always just him strategizing for a fight. He doesn't have the same richly developed internal world that Geto has because he doesn't really think or reflect on those things. When he does give insight to himself and his belief it's almost always himself talking aloud to other people.

Which neatly dovetails into my next topic re: Gojo's tendency to mask his true emotions under a light-hearted facade. I think it's inarguable he does that, Gojo was acting happy-go-lucky in front of his students about five minutes after killing Geto. Geto commented in the beach scene in Okinawa that Gojo goofing around on the beach was his way of being considerate to Amanai, and that while pretending to be carefree he'd been exhausting himself keeping the limiitless active for days not even sleeping. Gojo even downplays the burden of that in front of Geto, the one person he allows himself to be vulernable with.

However, I don't think Gojo's tendency to mask his true emotions is because he's crying on the inside during his fight with Megumi and at some point he's going to have an emotional breakdown over it. That interpretation I think comes from the fandom's tendency to woobify Gojo because they want to make him a more relatable and easy to understand character when Gojo is supposed to be alienating and off-putting.

He's an exploration of what being the strongest would due to a person's mind, and how much that would alienate a person from the people around him. Gojo's defined by his inability to relate to others, especially the people he finds as weak so it only makes sense he'd process his emotions in a way that's different from most people.

If people learn and grow and change by their interaction with others, then Gojo who's very cursed technique itself makes it so nobody can ever touch him unless he wants them too does not interact with others and therefore does not change.

It's interesting if you look at things from a budhhist perspective, because there are heavy themes of budhism present in the text of JJK itself. Let's say that Gojo attained enlightenment at seventeen. If he's already enlightened then why would he need to grow any more past that point? The ultimate goal of budhism is to escape the cycle of karma entirely, so from that perspective Gojo untethering himself from the world and earthly concerns and other people is his ideal endpoint.

On the other hand Gojo is like a person living in the world - he eats takeout, goes out drinking with his friends, has a job, pays his taxes. He didn't escape life and worldly concerns, because life went on, he's still living in the world and eleven years has passed since the moment he "attained enlightenment."

If he's already enlightened then he shouldn't need to grow, but considering hes still living in the world you need to grow and change with the world and people around you otherwise you're going to be left behind.

From what we've seen in canon Gojo changed a little bit. His ideals changed in the fact he adopted Geto's sense of responsibility and judgement of good and evil. He also witnessed Geto's fall and lost his friendship which is clearly what influences his current beliefs on wanting to protect the childhood of sorcerers, and that there's something rotten about the Jujutsu Society surrounding him.

I don't mean to say that every change in Gojo's life comes from Geto, but rather Gojo's current sense of beliefs are based around what happened to him in his youth. He wants to protect children because his youth was ruined. If Geto never fell and became a curse user would Gojo see anything wrong with the current system worth rebelling over?

Put better in another better meta here.

Still, my point is that... Gojo simply never cared enough about things like ideology. [...] He tried to internalize Geto’s original values of protecting the weak since he could sense some merit to them, finding joy in entertaining Riko and later his students, but he completely missed the reasoning behind those values. This is why he spouted all those things about not saving/reaching Geto (without having attempted it in the first place) and about becoming a teacher to prevent young sorcerers from missing out on their youth (immediately going to indoctrinate young Megumi into their messed up system as a pretext of saving him from the Zenins. [...] The only way he can empathize with them is by remembering what he himself enjoyed in his youth, that being companionship with his bff and his growing power. And when some of them don’t show interest in that (like poor fucking Megumi) Gojo is simply not interested in exploring alternatives.  To him, it’s not a question of ‘why’, it never was.

Gojo is extreemly self-oriented in all the good and bad that entails. Good because it makes him an extremely strong, and self confident individual that allows him to pursue those ideals (and his ideals are still pretty good) bad because he easily loses sight of other people's feelings.

A gojo who truly changed after the fight with Toji would have reached out to Megumi in an attempt to break the cycle that started with the Zen'ins abuse of TOji. A true example of being the bigger man by going out of his way to help the son of a man who in a lot of ways caused permanent damage to his life and the people around him.

However, that's blatantly not what Gojo did. Once again we have Word of God on this.

Gojo hasn't matured past his mindset of seeing people in terms of "strong and weak" and as a natural extension of that he tends to treat the same kids he's trying to help as assets so he's not living up to his desire to be the responsible adult in their lives. Because he's not really an adult. His growth stopped in the fight with Toji.

Gojo's solution to the problem of Jujutsu Society's use of child soldiers and treating children as expendable is... to create stronger child soldiers. I don't think Gojo does this maliciously, it's just he has no self-awareness whatsoever. He is Jujutsu Society's ideal and constantly praised as such and because of that can't see the flaws in his own ideology and actions. That's also the way Gojo was raised, pushed to be the strongest and to build his entire life and self-worth around being the strongest he can be. People who lack self-awareness tend to unsconiously recreate the circumstances under which they were raised because it's familiar to them. Do unto others what was done unto you.

To return to my original topic though Gojo has a tendency to make his true emotions but I don't think it's done because he's secretly crying on the inside.

I think Gojo's complete lack of reaction to Nanami's death was his genuine reaction. He's not putting on a brave face or anything. He probably does care that Nanami died, but this is just how Gojo processes his emotions. I also think there's a couple of times where Gojo is disturbed during the fight against Megumi such as when Sukuna used Megumi as a shield for the limitless, but at the same time he's clearly having the time of his life with this fight.

I don't think he's faking that. He shouldn't really be enjoying this battle because there are simply more important things right now than whether or not Gojo finally gets to have fun in a fight and be challenged against someone who's his equal - but apparently Gojo didn't get that memo.

Gojo is probably masking his emotions to some extent, but there's a difference between text (what is stated) and subtext (what is not stated and instead relies on reader interpretation). Gojo visibly enjoying himself in the fight is direct text. Gojo announces out loud that he has no problem beating up Megumi, the narration tells us that Gojo is feeling deeply satisfied with this fight.

While characters do sometimes hide their feelings and lie, and narrators are sometimes reliable, subtext is still an interpretation and it doesn't trump what is directly stated by the work.

The text has already told us directly that number one Gojo doesn't feel any hesitation to fight Megumi, and number two Gojo's first priority is winning and his second priority is worrying about Megumi.

Anything that contradicts that is fandom interpretation of the text. I don't think Gege is trying to pull a fast one or unreliable narrator trick here. Gege has always been blatantly honest about Gojo's flaws as a character, hence why I constantly cite his responses in interviews.

I think it's Gege's intention here to show us how Gojo's priorities are eschewed. You can make an argument that Gojo has to worry about defeating Sukuna first above everything else because of utiliarian reasons. If he loses here then everyone else dies. He may have to sacrifice Megumi to stop Sukuna from killing anyone else.

However, those utilitarian reasons are in direct opposition to Gojo's ideals. Gojo wants to create a world where children aren't sacrificed for the common good. In Gojo's ideals chidlren shouldn't be sarificed for adults, but rather it's adults who should protect children so they can live out their youths. If Gojo fails to protect Megumi here he's going back on everything he supposedly stands for.

So while you can make an argument pragmatically Gojo has to worry about winning the fight first. Idealistically he should be fighting to save Megumi, not to win against Sukuna. However, he's not doing that. By having him care more about the fight itself then Megumi, it shows that Gojo's pragmatism often is in conflict with his own idealism. Which is something we've always known about his character. He wants to help kids but at the same time he's using them as tools to further his own agenda.

Again a lot of Gojo's flaws arise from his own lack of self-awareness. Gojo does conceal his own emotions a lot, but I don't think he's hiding a crying child inside. Instead it's more like he's so alienated from both the people around him and his own emotions that he can't process them or self reflect.

Gojo is blind in a lot of ways, like it's made clear by Shoko that Gojo's isolation doesn't just come from being the strongest. There are people around him actively trying to connect with him and Gojo just kind of ignores them because he's too caught up in the idea that only someone like Geto who was as strong as he was could ever understand him.

Gojo doesn't show his own emotions or make deep emotional connections with others because he probably doesn't understand those emotions himself. He's not only alienated himself from the people around him, but he's alienated himself from his own feelings to such an extent that even when he does care it's difficult for him to show it.

#jjk meta #metasks #gojo satoru

[linkspooky]

Spooky, I'm so tired of seeing people say that "Megumi has no development/is badly written/sucks", especially on reddit, and now I almost started to cry because you started your last answer-meta about Megumi with "Megumi's actually the most complicated and well-written character in the manga", and let me tell you that's a lot coming from someone who writes such great metas!

Then I continue reading and you describe him in the same way that I perceive him but it's also like I'm seeing Megumi for the first time? it's difficult to express this but it always happens to me ... Megumi is so complicated that every time I read an analysis/meta about him this happens and I love it.

Sorry, I'm terrible at expressing myself and everything I wrote might be confusing but I needed to tell you, and also, Thank you for writing and sharing your metas! 🖤

Thank you for sending the ask, anon! I'm just happy you're a fan of Megumi and enjoy his character as much as I do. My friend @theanimepsychologist did a much better post than I did, explaining why exactly the complexity of Megumi's character is hard to miss. I wish I could just copy paste that whole post here and steal it, but I have some brief thoughts on why Megumi is oftentimes overlooked and it has to do with the fact that his development throughout the entire manga is hidden in the shadows.

I say Megumi's development is hidden in shadows, because in typical shonen manga tradition his character development goes hand in hand with him learning to use the Ten Shadows ability. It's outlined for him twice by both Gojo and Sukuna that Megumi should really be a lot more powerful than he is right now.

Megumi is your typical genius kid who everything comes so naturally to him he never learns to study, and therefore when moving up from high school to college begins to fall apart because he didn't learn the skills that would lead to his further development.

If you look at Megumi's situation, he should really be more powerful than he is. Megumi has the ten shadows, which is the strongest technique in the Zen'in, and apparently even capable of defeating a limitless user with the six eyes. Not only that, but he was handpicked and tutored by Gojo Satoru since he was a child, and he's clearly the student that Gojo takes the most interest in teaching.

Gojo and Yuta who have similiar natural talent are already at the level of special class at Megumi's age, and Yuta himself has only been a sorcerer for a year, but Megumi lingers at grade two. Gojo and Megumi himself are frustrated by his own lack of progression and neither of them can understand why.

In typical Gojo fashion, Gojo who only understands the world through the lens of sorcery, just suggests that Megumi get stronger at developing his ten shadows technique and everything else will work out. However, the reason Megumi can't advance isn't because he's not strong enough or not working hard enough, but because he's emotionally weak.

He falls apart mentally rather than physically, and we learn the reason why in his flashbacks to Tsumiki.

Megumi has no emotional reason to want to be a sorcerer, he doesn't even feel an obligation to save people does the way Yuji does, he was just groomed into it by Gojo. However, the loss of Tsumiki at middle school age makes Megumi falter, because the one reason he had for going forward is that he could possibly make Tsumiki safe because doing his job as a sorcerer gave them money to live... but then Tsumiki is out of the picture and Megumi is trapped in a life he doesn't want for no reason.

The difference between Megumi and Gojo that Gojo fails to notice, is that Gojo has an incredibly strong sense of self, and Megumi has no sense of self (which further inhabits his development). He's never once doing things for himself, despite calling himself selfish and espousing a much more selfish philosophy that Yuji does, his goals all focus around providing some kind of service or protection to others.

This is where Megumi's development starts becoming difficult to keep track of, because Megumi is a character who both changes a lot throughout the manga, and doesn't actually change at all. Which is a statement that makes no sense but let me explain: Megumi develops his ten shadows technique and on the outside is developing into a stronger sorcerer, but he never does the internal work and self reflection required to become emotionally strong.

Once again, Gojo in his great genius can only offer this advice to Megumi: Become strong, become a better sorcerer. This is because Gojo misses out that emotional issues are what is holding Megumi back. Megumi's first two major fights in the manga are losses, he's not strong enough to kill the curse on his own in the first chapter so Yuji eats the finger to help, he's not strong enough to stop Sukuna's rampage in Yuji's body, so Yuji dies in front of him.

It's two situations where Megumi reflects, "If I was strong enough, I would have been able to do X, Y, and Z, therefore it's my fault that this bad thing happened."

So we see Megumi throughout the arcs, continually developing his ten shadows technique to be stronger, while at the same time avoiding personal development. The biggest moment of this is origin of obedience, where he unlocks his partial domain expansion and then a few chapters later just avoids an emotionally difficult conversation with Yuji because he's scared to talk with him.

Megumi's desire is to feel free and grow into a better version of himself, but he stops at every opportunity to develop emotionally because that's harder. Gojo suggests that Megumi just pursue strength, so Megumi just starts finding himself in violence. Which is why the progression we do see in his character is him getting stronger and better at using his technique, coupled with him being more openly violent and more like his father the shadow of violence who is always chasing after him. This is what turns Megumi into Mr. "I'll totally kill people in the Culling Games if I need to."

Would Megumi at the beginning of the manga been okay with slaughtering normal people to get points in a game, maybe yes maybe no but he does advocate for just leaving a prisoner to die to curses because they committed a crime once. If anything his development post shibuya is just exaggerating a side to him that was already there. Megumi in times of crisis falls back on violence for survival because that's what Gojo taught him.

Megumi grows more confident with his abilities, he uses them in more creative ways, he even starts demonstrating himself as a leader among the group basically coming up with the strategy for the culling games. He's also more emotionally open with Yuji than he was in the past. There's definite emotional progression.

Beginning of the manga Megumi is lacking in confidence -> Yuji dies in front of him, he realizes his need to get stronger and starts applying himself -> In the Kyoto battle arc despite training with the second years he still falls short in the battle against Hanami -> Gojo reveals to megumi part of the reason he has a mental block against getting stronger is because he's downplaying himself for the sake of others, and afterwards Megumi starts imagining a better version of himself for the first time -> Megumi shows his strength at cooperating in Shibuya, fighting with Yuji, and then later Maki and the rest against Dagon -> Megumi is the one who convinces Yuji to keep fighting showing his emotional development and comes up with the strength for the culling games -> Megumi uses his domain expansion again but much more confidently than he did in origin of obedience.

There's clear progression here on Megumi's part that I can even give a general summary and map out, but at the same time the fundamental problem has not been solved, that Megumi doesn't have a thoroughly developed sense of self and self destructs. Gojo even says as much that part of the reason he's so limited in using his abilities is because he thinks he has Mahoraga to fall back on.

He tries to use Mahoraga in the fight against Sukuna, tries to use it against Todo of all people, tries to use it against the special grade spirit in origin of obedience and this time stops himself (making progress) only to once again default to using Mahoraga in Shibuya when he's cornered. Megumi doesn't try to personally develop himself because he considers his own life worthless and that behavior never stops. It keeps persisting until we get all the way to Sukuna taking over his body, which happened because Megumi ignored every warning from Yuji that Sukuna was planning for something. Because in that case he just assumed Sukuna would kill him and Megumi doesn't care about that because he doesn't value his own life.

Which is where we get the great paradox that is Megumi, he's the most developed character in the manga with a great deal of the manga focused on both his slow progression as a character, but also revealing more parts of his personality that the audience would not notice at first. People who saw Megumi advocate for leaving prisoners behind to die in the first arc of the manga, probably wouldn't assume he'd go so far as killing people in the culling games to get point, because it's quicker that way and he can justify killing bad people, but that's the natural extreme of that behavior to begin with.

We see more and more of Megumi's repressed anger, and his abandonment issues with his sister and his parents, so his character is moving, but we also don't see a lot of progression on those issues because Megumi's not focusing on trying to be a better person just being a better sorcerer.

In typical shonen manga fashion, the focus is put on Megumi getting stronger and learning to develop his technique ore. In atypical shonen manga fashion, Megumi is actually punished by the narrative for only caring about getting stronger. Sukuna's possession of him, and his loss of Tsumiki are both things caused by Megumi being ignorant until the last moment and keeping himself hidden in the shadows too, if he'd valued himself more he'd have steered clear of Sukuna and Yuji because of the danger, if he'd paid more attention to his sister he'd notice Yorozu in his body.

Which is what makes Megumi so unique, but also a little hard to understand because he is in so many ways a typical shonen jump character, and in other ways he's nothing like them because he's just Megumi.

#jjk meta #megumi fushiguro #metasks

[linkspooky]

first of all i'd like to thank you for your incredible analyses, i always look forward to reading them!

my question is, what do you think might be the reason behind gojo's outfit resembling toji's as he goes on to fight sukuna who is possessing megumi's body? (my apologies if you've already answered an ask similar to this)

have a good day/night!

Yes, I think there is a reason for Gege drawing Gojo in Toji's outfit. They are character foils, both considered the peak of their respective sorcery, Toji the peak of physical ability, and Gojo with using cursed energy. Despite being nearly equals they represent positions in the world, Gojo is the golden child of all of sorcerer society, whereas Toji is the scapegoat of the Zen'in who was kicked out only to return to burn the whole village down.

Which is where they are similar as well, they've both had their whole lives defined by the abusive sorcerer system they are stuck in. Gege draws visual parallels to Toji for characters like Megumi and Maki who are affected by this cycle.

Toji is both victim and perpetrator. His actions towards Megumi make him another link in the chain. When Tengen talks about the chain of events that led to Kenjaku sealing GOjo away, he names Toji as the start of that chain.

Toji was abused his entire life until he lost his ability to believe in his own goodness. Then he discarded his pride and began to kill for money he gambled away anyway. He took a job to kill a girl and shot her in front of Geto Suguru. The sheer injustice of the action broke Geto, who began to look down on non-sorcerers because of that. Which eventually led to his downfall at Gojo's hands years later, and Kenjaku stealing his body.

Each of these players was a victim of violence who then went on to go perpetuate violence against others. Tegen even uses chains while discussing on how he destroyed the future.

Toji's feelings towards Megumi are complex, but he's also an adult abuser. He was victimized by the toxic masculinity of both the Zen'in Clan, and sorcerer society as a whole, and his personality became formed around that toxic image of strength. He's used as a symbol when other characters act like him at their most violent moments. When they choose to continue the cycle of violence. Megumi looks exactly like Toji, something Gojo even comments on this chapter. Whenever Megumi is indulging in his more violent side, he's drawn to look like Toji.

Megumi is paralleld to Toji time and time again to indicate that Megumi is not mentally well. He is still caught up in this cycle of abuse. Whenever he's pushed a little bit in combat he indulges in his more violent side, he easily justifies murder (Megumi: Unlike Yuji I"m totally willing to kill people in the Culling Gage), and on top of that he's passively suicidal at times. This is not the behavior of a well-adjusted kid. Which is why the cycle is a cycle you can at the same time be a victim of violence and perpetuate violence.

Recently when Sukuna emerges from the bath while possessing Megumi's body, his hair is even drawn like Toji's.

The bath who's purpose is to make Megumi be near evil, and completely submerge his soul. Toji is not a good role model, guys. If anything the paralleling of Gojo and Toji's outfits is to show that the way Gojo treated Megumi isn't really that different from Toji.

Gojo appeared on the doorstep of a vulnerable child who had no adult guardian to take care of them, and rather than help that child only saw an opportunity to recruit someone for his child army he plans to overthrow the elders with. It's questionable whether or not Gojo even realizes this is abuse, because he is just doing what was done to him.

Megumi was born with an incredibly powerful technique like Gojo, so I'm sure in GOjo's mind the best thing he can do is to bring out Megumi's full potential as a sorcerer. Gojo doesn't see the option of just letting Megumi live a normal life or have a normal childhood because that wasn't an option for him.

Considering the death of Tsumiki, Gojo's basically failed Megumi in every way that counts TO MEGUMI. After all, the only reason Megumi decided to go with Gojo, is because he thought Tsumiki had a chance of happiness that way. Megumi did everything Gojo asked of him, he let Gojo raise him as a sorcerer for all those years, only for Tsumiki to end up dead in the end.

Gojo also in his own mind takes the blame for what happened to Yaga because it happened while he was sealed away, so he might even be aware of the fact he has failed Megumi.

So dressing up Gojo as Toji is an easy visual indicator that Gojo while he wants to break away from the cycle that harms children, is still very much a part of this cycle of abuse. While Gojo never acted as a father figure to Megumi, he was still an adult mentor that was involved in his life and yet never treated him like a child that needed to be protected. In fact, he sort of just exploited the fact that Megumi "owed him".

Gojo had a real chance to break the cycle of violence when he took in Megumi, the son of a man who harmed both him and Geto so severely. Yet, the cycle remains unbroken because Gojo's yet another adult figure in Megumi's life who failed to take care of him. Now we're at the end result of that, Gojo's got no qualms with beating the tar out of his body while possessed with Sukuna. Because Gojo may care about Megumi, but there's always been something else more important than Megumi's well being and individual needs. Megumi was a tool for Gojo's reform for society first, before he was a child.

#jjk meta #metasks #toji zenin #gojo satoru #megumi fushiguro #toji fushiguro

[linkspooky]

Gojo’s students, and in general Utahime’s students too, despite being Gen Z, they don’t have the mind set of one.

Then again, I am biased since I am an United States American who’s also within Generation Z, so I have a very westernized opinion on this. Gen Z in Japan can may well act very differently from the Gen Z in the USA. I don’t doubt that.

However, one thing I do want to point out is that the jjk younger generation didn’t seem to learn that the system they are in is terrible despite seeing or experiencing how horrible it is.

It could be a cultural thing, since my whole life the system that I lived in have failed me in every stage of my life. So I grew jaded and is critical of the system I’m in. I could see how they never have a change to learn nor see the flaws in the system due to how individualistic Gojo’s students are.

I suppose that’s a benefit with Utahime’s students, most of them are aware how terrible the system is, but all are too weak to do anything about it individuality.

Just some food for thought that I’ve been chewing on.

Okay, no comment on that Gen Z bit, but you're right there is an entire arc in the story dedicated to showing the Kyoto Kids and how they suffer from the injustices in their society. As they have suffered more directly from it, each of the Kyoto Kids is more than well-aware of the flaws in their society.

Each of the Kyoto kids is paired off with a Tokyo Kid and compared to them.

Panda and Mechmaru face off, and Mechamaru's point of jealousy is that he's not allowed to even walk around outside because he's debilitatingly ill due to his heavenly restriction and meanwhile Panda and every other sorcerer can walk in the sunlight free.

If you think about it Mechamaru is one of the children getting exploited, he's literally constantly in bodily pain, and he's still expected to perform as a sorcerer. Whereas, Panda's response is basicaly this: cool motivation bro.

In general, the Tokyo Kids all reply with very self-righteous statements that are technically right, but not too empathic to the person suffering right in front of them.

"Just because someone's been through a lot, doesn't mean they're right" is in fact a true statement, because the Kyoto Kids are lashing out with their emotions, and while their pain is valid emotions aren't objective fact they're just emotions.

However, the caveat of that statement is that suffering can also get you perspective though. People who aren't discrimminated against often don't understand the lives of people who are discrimminated against, because it's not a daily reality for them. It's just logical to not know about something that is not happening to you and you don't have to live with. So, suffering doesn't mean you're right, but it does give you perspective which the Tokyo Kids are sorely lacking.

So yes, Panda's not really obligated to care about Mechamaru's issue or life, but at the same time Gojo is trying to raise students with the purpose of having them correct the injustices of Jujutsu Society... but he's failed in that regard because when confronted with any of that injustice none of them really care.

When Momo tries to inform Nobara about the horrific abuse in the Zen'in Clan that Mai endures, something she's still not free of because unlike Maki she didn't get to leave Nobara's response is once again "I don't care." You have this same stock response that's technically right.

You don't have to pity the unfortunate, you don't owe them anything yes, but Gojo's trying to raise sorcerers that are going to correct Jujutsu Society so that less victims are made, but none of them listen to the victims around them and none of them even seem to grasp there's a problem... unless their name is Maki. Even then her solution to the problem isn't reform it's just destruction.

Kamo brings up clan politics and the pressures he faces as heir to the Kamo, and Megumi straight up says that not only does he not care about the Zen'in, or the Kamo or clan politics at all because it doesn't affect him personally, but he also doesn't care about whether or not he's right or wrong.

Megumi's not obligated to sympathize with Kamo, or even talk to him as they're practically strangers but at the same time how else are they supposed to fix the Jujutsu World if they don't listen to victims and aren't aware of the problems in it?

Which is a big problem in the Jujutsu World itself, because being a sorcerer is such a tough job, most sorcerers just work with their heads down not noticing what's going on around them. The kinds of sorcerers that rise to the top are exactly these people, ones that are either selfish enough to use others to further their advancements, ones who fit the molds of sorcerers a little too well and therefore aren't disadvantaged like a lot of the Kyoto kids, etc. etc.

This is pretty well demonstrated in Shibuya, someone like Nanami who is protective of children and tries to be a responsible adult around them dies because he stayed and fought, while someome like Mei Mei who actively abuses her brother and gets away with it still lives because she ran away.

Because Sorcerer society is such an individualistic society that rewards having your head down and being a cog, and punishes people who go against it by hammering down the nail that sticks out.

In order to overcome that you'd have to learn to think about other people than yourself, and look around you to see what's happening, but that requires thinking for themselves.

Which is Gojo's biggest flaw as a mentor, he's a cog that fits the machine of society so well, he still thinks with the values of sorcerer society. The solution to every problem is just get stronger. Which is why he's raised a bunch of strong sorcerers who fit perfectly into the machine just like he did, but he's failed to raise his children into free thinking adults.

#metasks #jjk meta

[linkspooky]

Do you think that Batman could empathize with Tomura and successfully reach out? They are both orphans with a dark side. The difference being is that Bruce was able to work through his darkness to be healthy(er) while Tomura had all his pain cultivated for 15-16 years.

Yes. 100% yes. That’s not even a question for me. I’ve been dying for someone to send me a question like this, because it’s something I’ve noticed in the general fandom response to the pro-heroes and the hero kids. The thing is, the heroes in My Hero Academia don’t really act like good wholesome heroes. They certainly act like marvel movie heroes... in the fact that they have strong superheroes and fight a bad guy and have such a clear delineation between good and evil that many viewers take them to have propagandistic qualities. Like, there’s a reason that marvel movies have degraded to what they are today currently, and besides all the other factors it’s because these comic book heroes are really getting sanded down into a set of superpowers, a costume and a bad guy to beat with no ideals or themes behind their characters. My Hero Academia heroes aren’t really that heroic, they don’t really have any ideals they stand for except the extremely vague notion of defeat the bad guy. Yeah, Deku has “Save people” but Deku is noted several times to be an oddity among heroes. 

The Pro-Heroes and the Hero Kids in My Hero Academia have this weird paradox to them where the story itself, and also in world hero propaganda sells the idea that heroes are incredibly wholesome, always selfless, people who go above and beyond to save and protect. Yet, the heroes in MHA are actually extremely cynical, and pragmatic, and they also really have no guiding principals beyond “Might makes Right.”

You can put all heroes on the scale of Spiderman <---------> Punisher. 

To define them by whether they are a superhero focused on saving innocents, or a violent vigilante who is focused on punishing the guilty, the heroes in MHA are far more on the punisher scale of things than anyone either in setting or the fandom would like to admit. This is a universe where heroes like Hawks and Lady Nagant regularly commit state sponsored executions. This is a setting where Enji Todoroki is revealed to be a heinous abuser of his family and everyone in the superhero community is like... fine with it for the most part. They either don’t bring it up, or they think Enji does such a good job it justifies his position. 

I mean, here to justify my accusation that heroes in MHA are far more on the punisher side of the scale. To compare to another manga, Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia have a similiar circumstance where a villain, Mahito and Dr. Garaki respectively are able to transform unwilling victims into mindless attack dogs by twisting their bodies into unseemly and horrifying shapes. Mahito’s altered humans, and Dr. Garaki’s nomus respectively seem to retain some sense of humanity and are in a state of pain. Nanami Kento, Shoko and Yuji all come to the harsh reality that there is nothing they can really do for the humans that Mahito has twisted, except for a swift mercy killing, and yet a lot of time is still given to the fact that killing something that is a human being is wrong and a heavy task even though it’s their only option, and two that the decision to kill someone is an extremely heavy burden to bear not made lightly. Nanami straight up loses all focus in a fight, and stops to wipe the tear of a former human when he realizes what they are fighting against. 

Compare this to the way every hero responds to the Nomus in My Hero Academia. Enji without knowing whether or not they are truly sentient or even capable of being turned back into what they were, roasts one alive right away it’s his first action with them. Enji then later on meets a Nomu who is capable of intelligence and communication, and roasts it alive even harder specifically because the way the Nomu Acts, reminds Enji of a darker part of himself, and killing that enemy is perfectly satisfying to Enji because it allowed him to take out those personal frustrations. When Mirko learns that the Nomu are former human bsings she has no hesitation at all at bashing their brains in, in fact she’s almost delighted because she doesn’t have to hold back and that makes it easier than fighting regular villains. If the enemy is sufficiently dehumanized than heroes in my Hero Academia very easily resort to murderous methods, and it’s not just heroes like Enji, Mirko does it, heck Present Mic expresses the sentiment that Oboro would be better off dead then continuing his existence as Kurogiri. 

The heroes in My Hero Academia are dark, almost myopic. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy them, but they are very different from the way heroes act in western comic books and I think a lot of people don’t know this because a lot of manga fans don’t really pick up comic books, and their biggest experience with western heroes therefore comes from movies. 

So when I say BATMAN WOULD NEVER dehumanize a villain to the extent the My Hero Academia heroes do on a regular basis, I’m not saying that as a batman fan, I am saying that because Batman is probably THE MOST IDEALISTIC DC HERO. Yes, even moreso than superman. Batman is Clark’s hero. His inspiration. His good time boy. 

Bruce would have noticed there was something off about Tomura right away in the early stages, if not the very first attack he waged on UA. I’m going to use two examples to prove my argument, one the fact that heroes also noticed that Shigaraki was extremely mentally unwell and just decided not to really care about it, and two Batman was actually faced with an extremely similiar situation in BTAS and his reaction is pretty much the opposite of All Might’s. 

1. There’s Something Wrong with That Kid

To those who were paying attention to Shigaraki’s character from the beginning, even before we got to dig further into his backstory in My Villain Academia arc, or even be shown a more sympathetic and human side to his personality in the Overhaul arc, from his introduction Shigaraki shows signs of extreme mental distress. He is constantly exocriating himself, which is a form of self-harm that manifests under circustmances of extreme psychological stress. Shigaraki has a full on skin disorder that many people have because he is so poor at managing his stress he relentlessly picks and scratches at himself. 

When he starts to lose in the middle of the fight, he essentially throws a tantrum, and not only does he immediately want to give up and go home, but he also lashes out at his own ally to try to vent that anger. 

When All Might removes the hand from his face he has a momentary break from reality, and talks to the hand a physical object like it’s a person calling it “father” and apologizing to it. 

Shigaraki also shows a clear grudge against both heroes, the failure of heroes, and the violence that heroes show (no kidding he’s a victim of violent abuse and the cycle of abuse in his family has an origin in his grandmother’s complete and total failure as a mother) that he clearly states in front of All Might once, and then Deku later the idea that heroes do not save people with their violence, and the implication that there are people that All Might have not saved and both times he is essentially brushed off by both of them. 

Shigaraki’s mental distress is so obvious that even the heroes of My Hero Academia, who’s general response to villains is lock them up and throw away the key, noticed it. The heroes notice several of the symptoms I listed above about Shigaraki, but then decide to dismiss him as a man-child and then go on to say that he represents a kind of “pure evil” that villains may find attractive. The enertain the idea for like half a second that there might be more to Shigaraki that makes him different from the regular street villains heroes usually fight, and then they just dismiss the thought. Once again a common theme, the second All Might realizes he is Nana’s grandson he wants to go after Shigaraki to attempt to find him and reason with him only for once again Gran Torino to dismiss him as the kind of villain who’s beyond redemption and All Might to immediately give up on trying any other tactic than beating him down. 

Now why do I say Batman would have immediately gone after Shigaraki and tried to reason with him and get him the help he needs? Do I have proof of him acting similarly? Batman in fact, comes across a similiar enough situation in one of the most famous episodes of Batman the Animated Series. 

2. Man-Child meet Woman Child 

Baby-Doll Batman the Animated Series season 3, episode 4 is one of the most popular episodes, and it shows most clearly the way Bruce’s brand of heroics is ultimately based on saving and empathy for his villains rather than just putting them down for the greater good. I could have gone with a lot of batman villains with much more clear and tragic origins, Mr. Freeze isn’t even trying to achieve anything villainous he wants to save his wife. Two-Face started out as not only Batman’s best friend, but a good guy and an ally of justice who was driven to insanity by a horrifying and sudden tragedy. Harley Quinn is a victim of grooming and abuse similiar to Shigaraki who has her entire sense of self warped and controlled by an abusive narcissist who quite literally turns her into a crude relfection of himself, to act as a pawn in his own evil schemes. I could use a lot of batman villains, but no Baby Doll, we’re going with Baby-Doll. 

Mary Dahl is a washed up child actress with a physical condition that prevents her from growing up past a child, she’s sort of like Claudia from Interview with a Vampire, an adult mind inside a child’s body. Not only will she always be treated and regarded as a child for her physical appearance, due to her child as a former child star who’s show was cancelled and had no success in acting when she tried to do anything outside of playing the cutsey and innocent “baby-doll” on the sitcom “Love that Baby” she has ended up emotionally stunted and stuck in the past. 

Mary Dahl’s fall to villainry is a bit less tragic than Shigaraki’s, she wasn’t like kidnapped and groomed since childhood by a villainous mastermind and turned into his own pet “make your own supervillain” project. She’s not getting work, but she’s not poor or destitute, there are former child stars who lose out on their childhoods and have no money to show for it, but she seems to have enough money to at least have an extremely competent agent and money to blow on her elaborate schemes. Her backstory is not nearly as tragic as Shigaraki’s, yet she shows several symptoms in common with Shigaraki, being a former child star like many child stars she shows severe dysfunction as an adult because it ate up her entire childhood. Child labor is bad people. Children who are not given room to grow up and develop as kids, have problems late into their adulthood.

She is also someone who feels rejected and left behind by society as a whole, it’s clear her only way of connecting to other people was the attention she received as a child star and the connections she had with cast members. She also experiences severe body dysmorphia I would say on level with Shigaraki’s, Shigaraki’s body dysmporphia is so bad he constantly picks at his own skin, his quirk soemtimes even causes physical damage to him and he feels extreme nausea at a near constant basis b/c of his emotional unrest. Baby-Doll literally experiences a same incompatability with her body, she has an adult mind, she craves to be a fully grown normal body, and a lot of her mental breaks from reality seem to come from how easily people mistake her for and treat her like a child. 

Mary Dahl also shows severe dysfunction when it comes to regulating her own emotions. As tragic as Mary Dahl’s fall from fame is, and as much as it mirrors what happens to a lot of child stars in reality, Mary Dahl kind of also dug her own grave by her actions. Everyone on the cast thought she was notoriously difficult to work with, her show wasn’t cancelled on her, she left because the directors added in a new character she didn’t like and took attention away from her because of plummeting ratings. She left the show to try to take a more serious turn as an actor, once again to get attention and because she was on an ego-trip, then tried to get the show running again when it didn’t work for her but by that point it was too late. She’s also someone who just does not treat people well, she’s manipulative, she never engages people as her true self Baby-Doll is a role she is essentially playing, to both allow herself to violently lash out, but also to evade any responsibility for her own actions. It’s also ambiguous how much of the Baby-Doll persona is a genuine psychotic break (I don’t use the word psychotic lightly, I’m also not saying LOL look at her she’s so crazy, but there are genuine moments where Mary seems to mistake what happened on her TV show for reality which indicates that she’s not just trying to reclaim her former glory, that she is full on having delusions) there are also moments where “Baby-Doll” is a deliberate act she’s putting on, and Mary seems aware of what she is doing. 

Mary Dahl is at the same time, delusional enough to believe she can kidnap everyone on her former show, and force them to just pretend to be the characters they were on her show, and playing dollhouse with this pretend family will somehow fix her problems. She is also, lucid enough to carefully plot and execute the kidnapping of several people, control a minion in her agent, and then evade capture from Batman several times. She is both a victim (she’s genuinely mentally unwell) and a villain (but not unwell enough she’s not aware her actions are wrong, she’s deliberately hurting people she just thinks her tragedy makes her entitled to that revenge). Mary Dahl thinks the world has wronged her and left her behind, that her show being cancelled was some great injustice done to her, and something she deserves the chance to rectify, even though as I just explained in detail that Mary was equally as responsible for the cancellation of her show. She is a person not willing to take any responsibility for her actions or see fault in herself. 

You could even argue because of these quality Mary is way less sympathetic than Shigaraki, Shigaraki at least seems to have genuine critques about his society, and feels that he and the people around him have been rejected in an unjust fashion. Mary Dahl is upset her TV Show got cancelled and decided to make it everyone else’s problem. Mary Dahl’s problems are a lot more selfish, and smaller in comparison to Shigaraki’s, and yet the story itself does not downplay Mary’s distress because it is genuine to her. 

In one extent, Mary is a danger to others, but she’s also a danger to heserlf. Like I said, it’s ambiguous how much but she’s clearly a mentally unwell woman. When someone is experiencing delusions on that level it’s a brain chemistry problem, and it’s also not something where it’s fair to go “Well, she has no reason to be mentally ill, it’s not like she was beaten, she’s just having an emotional breakdown because she’s not famous anymore.” I mean, what does it matter the reason whether she’s having a breakdown is a good enough reason or not, she’s clearly in extreme distress. 

Number two, I think society as a whole tends to downplay the suffering of celebrities or child stars and make them seem like they are just entitled or spoiled for acting out, because they’re rich and famous and living a life most people would die for so who cares. But, HollyWood, the spotlight, and public scrutiny has a really bad psychological effect on people. Most people would not do well under such harsh public scrutiny all the time, and also when you make your entire personality around being a star and having the spotlight, also because in Baby Doll’s case there’s really no other career avaiable for her because of her condition then losing that is a pretty huge loss. Like, child stars who cannot either adapt to adulthood, cannot get work as adult actors, or just cannot even function as adults is a pretty common societal problem. 

On top of kidnapping people, holding them hostage, she’s also someone who clearly needs help, like Baby-Doll is not just doing these things because she’s a selfish, entitled brat throwing a tantrum because she’s not famous anymore, she’s experiencing clear mental breaks from reality where she confuses her tv show for reality, she’s mentally sick and in need of treatment. 

Baby-Doll is presented to us as a manipulative child star desperate for the spot light, endangering her cast because she herself cannot let go of the past for most of the episode, people around Bruce are pretty unsymapthetic to her, her attempts to get a more serious career is played off as a joke, the cast members do not like Baby-Doll and found her to be extremely high maintennance and difficult to work with even when she was on the show, Baby-Doll’s clearly not after the cast because of nostlagia, friendship or happy memories she has with her former cast members, but rather because she wants to pretend to be the the sitcom character who was surrounded by family who loved her. People constantly remark how crazy she is for thinking a tv show is reality. Even Robin says that he absolutely despised the “Baby-Doll” show, and it’s dismissed as kind of a cheesy sitcom with no real merit. 

However, the last five minutes turn all of that on its head. Bruce Wayne, my darling, is presented to us as a man of few words. We don’t actually see Bruce’s reaction to what Baby-Doll is doing for most of the episode, we see Dick’s who clearly thinks she’s just crazy, Bruce the whole time is focused on just resolving the incident first, finding the kidnapped people, rescuing them from Baby-Doll’s grip. So Bruce’s absolute first priority is just to stop the villain from doing the bad thing, he stops the bad behavior and makes Baby-Doll unable to hurt others. 

Bruce, the living embodiment of the term “Gap Moe”, because he is so closed off and not reacting to Baby Doll in any way, does not seem to be going out of his way to sympathize with her. That however, changes once the the threat Baby-Doll represents to others is neutralized. Baby-Doll then flees from Bruce with a Tommy Gun out into the middle of the night. The tables have turned and Baby-Doll has gone from a cackling villain, pretending often to be a scared little girl in order to manipulate people, to a genuinely scared and desperate person. Even the image Baby-Doll evokes fleeing from Bruce, is a sympathetic one, Baby-Doll despite being an adult woman still looks like a child, and acts several times like a woman-Child and she is fleeing from an adult man who picked his costume to terrify crimminals into submission. 

Baby-Doll flees into a carnival ground filled with children, she has a Tommy-Gun on her, she’s still pretty much a direct threat to others, but the way Bruce approaches her does a complete 180. Bruce is calling out after her to stop fleeing, when she disappears into a tunnel, he’s telling her to stop not because he wants to arrest her, but because she’s going to hurt herself at this point. Baby-Doll is no longer a danger to others, she’s a danger to herself because she’s scared desperate, and fleeing, and instead of pursuing her to put her down Bruce is trying to stop her from getting hurt as she flees. This is also behavior he has shown to repeat, in Harley’s Holiday he pursues Harley the whole episode not to stop her because she’s on a crime spree, but because she’s freaking out and he doesn’t want her to be sent to Arkham and lose all the progress she made in her recovery. 

Bruce pursues her into a mirror maze and this is where we get the most famous scene in the episode, Baby-Doll is still dead set on killing Bruce (this is also where Bruce shines, Baby-Doll is actively firing a gun at him and he is still calling out at her to stop because she might get hurt). 

Baby Doll fires at the mirrors over and over again, until one of the funhouse mirrors shows her what she might look like as an adult, at which point not only does Baby-Doll come to a complete stop, but she talks not in her Baby Doll voice, but as Mary-Dahl. 

Mary Dahl: Look. That’s me in there. The real me.  Mary Dahl: There I am... BUt it’s not really real, is it?  Mary Dahl: Just made up and pretend like my family, and my life and everything else.  Mary Dahl: Why couldn’t you just let me Make believe? 

She then grows angry at realizing that she is trapped on the other side of the mirror and will never exist in that adult body, she starts firing at every mirror around her trying to get batman who stalks her once again as an unspeaking shadow, until she gets impatient enough to destroy even the idealized image of herself represented in the funhouse mirror. At which point the gun itself runs out of ammo, and Mary breaks downc rying. At that point Batman could say that Mary is just throwing a tantrum, that being a washed up child star doesn’t entitle her to hurt others, he could say  that her tears aren’t even real because Mary Dahl has pretended to be a child in order to manipulate other people and merit sympathy literally this whole episode. Bruce does not do any of that. Bruce’s only action after following her this whole time, is to remove the gun from her hands so  she’s no longer capable of hurting someone, and then when she  hugs him, to return her hug and comfort her. 

Mary Dahl: I didn’t mean to... 

Because, utlimately she’s a human being who needs help. It’s not Bruce’s job to pick and choose who deserves that help, it’s his job to help people who need it. 

So yes, Bruce would have noticed right away that Shigarki wasn’t just a violent child, but a child who is clearly suffering from distress and lashing out. He wouldn’t just dismiss Shigaraki as an entitled man-child because as I’ve just demosntrated, Bruce had a situation where he frankly could have just dismissed Baby-Doll as a selfish an entitled vain womanchild and yet he didn’t do that. He saw a crying person in front of him, and he helped them, and he was even trying to help her before she started crying and asking for comfort like a more standard victim TM. Letting a child who shows clear signs of abuse like Shigaraki has go unhelped is not only out of character for Bruce, it basically is against everything he stands for as a hero. 

And if you still don’t believe me on that, here’s a quote from the director of the final installment of the popular Arkham Series, “Arkham Knight”, a game that features a character Jason Todd who was similiarly groomed over a long period of time by batman’s arch enemy into an enemy for batman to fight. 

#askspookies #batman #dc meta #dc comics #dc comics meta #batman meta #bruce wayne #btas #batman the animated series #shigaraki tomura #mha meta #metasks #ironically this long post is not bashing MHA for having dark heroes #as much as i love idealistic heroes my second favorite marvel hero after spiderman is daredevil #my third favorite is the punisher #though versions of the punisher that are aware #that he's not doing the right thing #the line between heroics as essentially volunteer work #and heroics as vigilanteism #is a fascinating concept to explore #jason todd is much more interesting as a violent drug lord who is still soft on victims #then he is as a much more sympathetic and palatable edgy anti hero with daddy issues #its just the extreme dissonance in mha in how the heroes are written #and how they are framed #my biggest example is hawks of course #hawks goes to extremely dark territory that makes for a fascinating character #only for hori to completely back off on that plot #and go back to framing hawks as an idealistic hero obsessed with saving people #that's just a clear example of having your cake and eating it too